Belles on Their Toes (4 page)

But it was too late. Bill drank orange juice and salad oil.

“Delicious,” he grinned. “Positively delicious.”

Tom looked with distaste at the glass he was holding. He managed a smile, but it was a weak one.

“Good boy, Bill,” he muttered finally.

“Am I in the Club for drinking my medicine, Tom?”

“I guess so.”

“For a thousand years and four days?”

Tom nodded glumly.

“Are you going to drink yours now, Tom?”

He nodded again.

“And are you going to drink a glass with Lillian, Fred, Dan, Jack, Bob and Jane, like you promised?”

Tom looked around him. The girls were biting their lips to keep from laughing. Frank had buried his head in his pillow.

“Drink it,” said Bill.

“It’s delicious,” said Ernestine. “Ast Anne.”

If looks could have killed, the Princess’s body would have been in an advanced stage of rigor mortis.

“Ast Ernestine,” said Martha.

“Ast Martha,” said Frank.

“Ast Frank,” said Bill.

“I don’t know why I work here,” Tom shook his head dully. “Seventeen years with the family, and when I start to get a little old they try to poison me. A hundret and twenty million people in the country, and I got to be the one who works here.”

“No,” said Anne. “Don’t drink it, Tom. It was only a joke, and not a very good one, I guess. We’re sorry, Tom.”

Tom stepped back with dignity, favored us with a withering glance, and drained his glass. Then he stalked out of the room, descended to the kitchen, and returned with the bottle of castor oil and a spoon. He handed them to Ernestine, and he didn’t forget to bow.

“Here, Doochess,” he said. “I know who put him up to it. I seen that guilty look. I ain’t deef, you know. I ain’t blind. Now you get the rest of them to take their medicine, like the doctor said.”

He left the room again, only this time he backed out, bowing, curtsying, and grasping his forelock.

Ernestine tried to hand the bottle to Anne, but Anne wouldn’t take it.

“It’s your responsibility,” Ernestine said. “You’re the oldest.”

“Tom’s right,” Anne replied.” “I seen that guilty look too, Doochess, so it’s up to you. I delegate the responsibility.”

4.
Completely Dead

M
ARTHA WAS RED HAIRED
, freckled, and oblivious to the fact that within the last year she had grown tall, slender, and curvy—very curvy. The realization was to come in time—about the time that the freckles, with considerable prompting from Martha, started to disappear.

But for the moment she preferred blue serge bloomers to skirts, middie blouses to sweaters, and bicycles to rumble seats.

Martha was casual, easy going, steady, and a favorite with everybody. Efficiency came to her naturally, partly because of her temperament, partly because she was at the age when the mere mention of work had a depressing effect. If possible, work was to be avoided altogether. If not, it was to be disposed of as rapidly as possible, and with a minimum of fatigue. Hence, efficiency.

She had just finished her sophomore year in high school, during which she had broken Anne’s and Ernestine’s previous records by carrying home her own books less than a dozen times. She accepted male carriers matter-of-factly, without attributing their attention to anything going on under her very nose. Our house was almost two miles from Montclair High School, and Anne and Ernestine used to say that Martha selected her gentlemen friends solely on their ability to carry heavy weights for long distances.

We recovered from chicken pox in a comparatively short time, and Martha took over the job of supervising the packing for Nantucket. She had Frank and Bill bring three trunks from the attic to the upstairs hall. We carried our clothes to her, and she made sure we had everything we needed before she let us put them in the trunks. Martha herself was established in a comfortable chair, and didn’t have to move.

To simplify the matter of logistics, Martha had drawn up a number of check-off lists, from which she seemed to derive more than her share of satisfaction. Martha usually was on the receiving end of orders from Anne and Ernestine, and it was a special pleasure for her to have an opportunity to boss them now.

“Name!” she began by asking Anne, when Anne appeared in the hall with a pile of her own clothes. “Speak out loudly so I can hear you.”

“My cow,” Anne replied. “It’s all right to be efficient, but don’t carry it too far.”

“Do you,” said Martha, offering to hand her the check-off lists, “want to supervise the packing?”

Anne admitted she didn’t.

“Then be good enough, please, just to answer a few simple questions. Name!”

“Paavo Nurmi, the Flying Finn,” Anne told her. “Age, eighteen. Hobbies, taking orders and impudence from a mere slip of a girl.”

“Speak out loudly so I can hear you,” Martha said, thumbing through her papers and coming up with Anne’s check-off sheet.

“Oh, what’s the use,” Anne snorted. And then, shouting, answered: “Anne.”

“Good,” Martha beamed. “Dresses?”

“Six.”

Martha made a note of it. “Bathing suit?”

“Sure does, Mr. Bones. Suits just fine.”

“Speak out loudly so I can hear you.”

“One,” Anne hollered. “You’re so efficient, I’ll bet you’re rocking with the grain of the wood.”

After running through the complete list, all the way from hair-pins to shoe trees, Martha directed Anne where to stow her clothes. Then the rest of us, by ages, stepped up, gave our names, and went through the same routine.

Each older child, besides being responsible for himself, was responsible for a younger child. Anne was responsible for Jane, Ernestine for Jack, Martha for Bob, and Frank for Dan. This applied not only to packing clothes, but any family project or emergency. In the event of fire, or when crossing a street, or when it came to writing up the daily jobs on the process charts, the older ones were supposed to help their particular charges. Bill, Lillian, and Fred were in the intermediate group—old enough to look out for themselves, but not old enough to help anyone else.

Once the clothes were packed, together with sheets, blankets, tools, dolls, games, scrapbooks, crystal detectors and headphones, stamp collections, free samples and other articles that couldn’t possibly be left behind, we devoted our attention to Departure Day.

Martha, meanwhile, had taken over the budget. Martha was not ungenerous with her own money, although it didn’t exactly flow through her fingers. But when it came to handling Mother’s money, her fingers had to be pried apart and twisted. It was a waste of time to tell Martha that you can’t take it with you. She had long since made up her mind that, if that were the case, no sensible person would even dream of going.

She drew up requisition slips that we had to fill out in triplicate to buy anything for the house or to get our weekly allowances. We agreed with Bill that it seemed a lot of trouble to go to for fifteen cents a week.

To get to Nantucket, we planned to take a Lackawanna train from Montclair to Hoboken, a ferry from Hoboken to New York, a night boat from New York to New Bedford, Massachusetts, and the Nantucket boat from New Bedford to our destination. We knew that the transferring, with all our suitcases and the younger children, was going to be a job. But the trip on the night boat was cheaper than going to New Bedford by train.

Martha, who had been duly identified by Anne at the bank, cashed a check and went to New York to pick up the reservations. She was appalled and unnerved when the man at the ticket office on the dock told her the total cost.

“There must be some mistake,” she told him. “It’s Nantucket we’re going to, not Paris, France. Would you mind adding it up again?”

The man added again, and then Martha checked him—twice. When she finally became convinced that there was no mistake, she decided to turn back two of the five staterooms Mother had reserved, and to exchange two of the full-fare tickets for half fares.

When she returned from the city, Martha, bristling with indignation, told Ernestine and Anne about the prices. She also explained about turning in the staterooms and exchanging the tickets.

“So I saved better than twenty dollars,” she concluded. “There’ll have to be four of us in each of two staterooms, and three in the other.”

“Good night,” said Anne, “even three persons in one of those staterooms is a slum. But I guess we’ll manage somehow.”

“Of course we will,” Martha agreed. “And think of saving …”

“Wait a minute,” Anne interrupted. “You’ve forgotten all about Tom. Where’s he going to sleep?”

“And if you try to tell us he can sleep in one of our state rooms,” Ernestine put in, “all I can say is that’s carrying economy a little too far.”

“It certainly is,” Anne agreed. “The very idea!”

“I’ll scrub floors,” Ernestine announced dramatically. “I’ll clean out the rest rooms in the Hudson Tubes. But I will not …”

“Neither will I,” said Anne.

“I didn’t forget about him,” Martha insisted. “And for cat’s sake put down those scrub brushes and get up off your hands and knees.”

“Where’s he going to sleep then?” Anne asked.

“Well,” said Martha, “he was complaining just the other day about how he never slept a wink on the way to Nantucket. So if he doesn’t sleep anyway, what’s the use of throwing away perfectly good money?”

“You can’t do that to him,” Anne protested. “You go right back to New York and get another stateroom.”

“It’s all right,” Martha insisted. “I already told him about it.”

“Poor Tom,” Anne sympathized. “What did he say?”

“Oh, you know Tom. He grumbled about a hundred and twenty million people in the country, and about how Lincoln freed all the slaves but one. But he didn’t really object.”

“Poor Tom!” Anne repeated. “My cow.”

“I don’t know why he puts up with us,” Ernestine agreed.

“Look,” said Martha, fishing angrily in her pocket for the checkbook. “Do either of you want to take over the budget? I ask you, do you?”

“I guess it wasn’t such a bad idea after all,” Anne hastily assured her.

“And you did,” Ernestine pointed out, “save more than twenty dollars of Mother’s money.”

“Perfectly good money,” amended Martha, who obviously considered all currency of the realm to be eminently satisfactory. “And I wouldn’t have done it if he hadn’t said he didn’t sleep.”

“It’s all right, I guess,” said Anne, “but how about those two half fares?”

“What about them?” Martha demanded belligerently, fishing for the checkbook again.

“Put that thing away,” Anne told her. “I’m in charge here, and I’m not going to have checkbooks, checkoff sheets, manifests, or bills of lading waved in my face every time I open my mouth.”

“Frank might possibly be able to get away with a half-fare ticket, but not you,” Ernestine said.

“I’d like to know why not,” Martha replied indignantly. “I’m a little tall, I admit. But I certainly can bend my knees when I go up the gangplank.”

“It’s not just your being tall,” Ernestine said significantly.

“Well, what is it then?”

“For goodnesssake,” said Anne, looking. “Just look at yourself.

Martha glanced down and shrugged. “Oh, that,” she said. “My gosh, nobody pays any attention to things like that.”

OUR TRAIN FOR HOBOKEN
left in the early afternoon. We didn’t want to have to pay for more than one taxicab, so five of the older children, with Ernestine in charge, walked from the house to the station. Anne and Tom, with the five youngest children and all of our suitcases, waited at the house for a taxi.

The suitcases were lined up on the front steps, and Anne had the five children washed and ready, when the cab finally appeared.

It wasn’t until the suitcases were stowed away and the children packed into the taxi that Anne discovered Tom was missing. She called him, but he didn’t answer. She unlocked the front door and searched the house. In the kitchen she found Tom’s cap, a cage with our two canaries, and an empty cardboard box with holes punched in the top. But no Tom.

The cab driver kept blowing his horn, and Anne went out front to pacify him. The children were jumping and crawling around the car, and Bob was sitting in the driver’s lap.

“If you’re the ringmaster,” the driver told Anne, reaching into the back seat and rescuing his hat from Jack, “you’d better get this show on the road. I’ve got other stops to make this afternoon, you know.”

“I’m doing the best I can,” Anne said. “We’ll be ready in a minute. I think our cook is looking for his cat.”

“How about Mr. Chairman?” Fred asked.

Anne snapped her fingers. “I knew I forgot something. Where is he?”

Mr. Chairman was our dog, a sort of collie. He was there, barking at the cab and growling at the driver.

“Get a leash on him,” Anne told Fred. “Don’t let him get away.”

Tom came running down Eagle Rock Way.

“Fourteen,” he panted, “ain’t nowhere to be found.”

“We’ll have to leave her,” Anne said. “We’re late for the train right now. Get into the cab, quick.”

“Leave Fourteen?” Tom asked incredulously. “Are you crazy?”

“Please. We simply must catch this train.”

“What do you think I am,” Tom snapped. “I ain’t going to leave that cat. If she don’t go, I don’t go.”

“We’ve got Mr. Chairman,” Anne begged. “And you’ve got the canaries.”

“But I ain’t got Fourteen.”

“Damn it,” Anne shouted. “I’ve planned this trip for better than two weeks. I planned it right down to the last bath and shined shoe. A plague of chicken pox didn’t delay it and no cat is going to ruin it. Now get into that cab.”

Tom never had heard Anne swear before, and he was impressed.

“I ain’t even got my cap,” he said. “Nor the birds, neither.”

“Go get them,” Anne told him, “and be damned quick about it.”

“You heard what the lady said,” the driver put in. “I got other stops to make.”

Tom went, mumbling but hurrying. “I wisht your father could hear you talk like that. He’d learn you. He’d learn you good, you bold thing you.”

Tom was still mumbling when he returned in a joggling half run, with his cap and the cage, and got into the cab. “He’d learn you, all right. Swearing like a cab driver in front of all them children. You ain’t too big to spank, neither.”