Belles on Their Toes (7 page)

“I wouldn’t of done it,” Tom assured him again, “only she leaned over and …”

The judge rapped his gavel. “Get him out of here,” he said to Frank, “before he gets to the part about the stick. Otherwise I might change my mind about suspending sentence.”

Occasionally, even years later, after everyone in the family was in bed and all the lights were out, we’d hear Tom chuckling through his nose up in his bedroom. And we’d know that while he might be sorry, his regret was tempered with an intriguing mental image that would accompany him to the grave.

THE REMAINDER
of the two weeks before Mother’s arrival went comparatively smoothly. The economy budget stayed in balance. Ernestine had moderate success in improving the cooking. Martha looked swaddled, but eminently respectable, in Mother’s shortened bathing suit. Tom didn’t pick up any more sticks.

There is no denying, though, that tempers were wearing thin. Anne’s pep talks were beginning to sound hollow, and fights were increasingly frequent. A steadying adult hand was needed, and most of us realized it.

There was one fight, in which the whole family took part, that started when Frank complained about the frequency with which Ernestine placed clam chowder on the menu.

Ernestine was especially fond of clams. Not only that, but we got the clams for nothing by digging them ourselves. Frank could either take clams or leave them alone, preferably the latter. He thought that clam chowder, four times in a single week, was too much to take, even under an austerity program. Sometime during the climax of the argument, Frank picked up his bowl of chow der and inverted it over Ernestine’s head.

With clams draped over her ears, Ernestine arose silently, picked up her chowder bowl, and repeated the process on Frank. Fists started to fly in a mass battle that pitted the clam lovers against the clam endurers. Anne finally managed to restore peace, but not until all the chowder bowls had been emptied.

We didn’t have a bathtub or a shower at The Shoe, since Dad thought bathing in salt water was more healthful, so we had to put on our bathing suits and go down to the beach to wash our hair.

By then, having let off steam, everyone was in a high if clammy good humor. There were considerable giggling, tripping, good-natured sand-throwing, and pinching as we ran down to the water. The neighbors, not being stone deaf, must have heard the threats of mutilation and death that had emerged a few minutes before from our cottage. In any event, they seemed astounded to see all of us unscathed, except for clams and potatoes in our hair, and apparently on the best of terms.

Anne deducted twenty cents from each of our allowances, which meant that some of the younger children didn’t get any spending money for two weeks, and there wasn’t any repetition.

Mother wrote daily, and her letters contained personal messages for each child. She could hardly wait to see Jack swim, and she was mighty proud he had learned. She certainly wouldn’t forget Martha’s bathing suit when she passed through Montclair. Ernestine shouldn’t worry about missing her college boards—it might be best anyway for her to take a post-graduate year at high school and start college after that, when the family would be a little more settled.

Most important of all, the talks at London and Prague had gone well—very well, she thought. And she had plans for opening a motion-study school at our house in Montclair.

All of us would be on the steps, waiting for Mr. Conway, the mailman, in the mornings. There was a calendar, with a red circle around Mother’s arrival date, hanging on the chimney in the dining room. Each morning at breakfast, Lillian, who was in charge of the calendar, marked off another day.

The morning before Mother’s arrival, we washed and oiled the floors, waxed the furniture, polished brass, scrubbed windows, and trimmed the bayberry bushes in the front yard. Everybody, including Tom, pitched in, and when we were through the house was cleaner than it was in the beginning, is now, or probably ever shall be.

We went for a quick swim, more for sanitary reasons than for relaxation, and then put on our best clothes. Everybody looked fine, even Martha in her hand-me-downs.

Ernestine had bought a large roast for supper and spent a good part of the early afternoon telling Tom what she intended to do to him, and how she intended to torture his cat, if he charred a single inch of it. It was the first roast we had had since we left Montclair.

Lillian was stationed at the top of the taller lighthouse as a lookout for the Nantucket boat. As soon as the smoke was visible, she let us know, and Anne lined us up in the dining room for a final inspection.

“Everyone’s alive and whole,” she began, just as Tom stuck his head into the doorway to see what was going on, “and nobody’s in jail.” Tom’s head disappeared again. “So I guess we did a pretty good job.”

She cleared her throat and paced the floor in front of us.

“You all know,” she said in her best oratorical style, “that I don’t enjoy making speeches.”

This was something we didn’t know at all because there were few things Anne enjoyed more. Before she went to college, she had been a mainstay of the high school debating team, and drove her arguments home with such enthusiasm that her coach used to tell her she was supposed merely to stump her opponents, not tree them.

“Now that I am about to relinquish my authority,” she continued, “I want to thank you one and all for your fine spirit of cooperation.

“I would caution you about three things,” she said, holding up the three fingers of her right hand and counting them off one at a time. “Don’t reveal to Mother about, one, Tom’s being arrested; two, the disgraceful clam chowder episode; or, three, Martha’s wearing insufficient clothing to the beach the day we arrived.”

“What’s she talking about, Fred?” Dan whispered loudly. “And why is she hollering and sticking out her arms like that?”

“Search me, Dan,” Fred whispered back just as loudly.

“I’m talking about this,” said Anne, forgetting her role as public speaker and leaning over so her face was on the level of theirs. “If you tell Mother about Tom and the fat woman, or about the clam chowder, or about the day Martha wore the under half of Mother’s suit to the beach, I’ll murder you.”

“You mean,” asked Fred, “the day she was naked except for that black underwear?”

“I like that!” Martha protested.

“That’s just what I mean,” Anne nodded. “Mother’d die if she heard it.”

We started for the dock. Jane walked some of the way by herself, and then Anne and Ernestine carried her together, in a chair they made of their hands and wrists. We knew Mother would want to see all of us when her boat pulled in.

In a person’s lifetime there may be not more than half a dozen occasions that he can look back to in the certain knowledge that right then, at that moment, there was room for nothing but happiness in his heart.

The walk to the boat that afternoon was one of those occasions.

The steamer rounded Brant Point and we could begin to distinguish the passengers.

“I think I see Mother,” Lillian shouted breathlessly.

“Where?” we asked her. “Where?”

Lillian was too excited to tell us. “Mother,” she screamed, and then jumped up and down so that Anne had to grab her dress to keep her away from the edge of the dock.

Then we all saw Mother. She was waving, and it looked as if perhaps she were jumping up and down a little too. She was still dressed in widow’s clothes, but her coloring had come back. Perhaps it was just a trick of the wind, which was billowing her dress behind her and may have accounted for the jaunty angle of her hat, but she seemed stronger and more sure of herself than we had ever seen her before.

In a matter of minutes, the boat was tied to the dock and Mother was coming down the gangplank, struggling with two suitcases. Martha wasn’t the only one thinking about saving tips.

People stood back and gave us room as we descended on her. First it was a mass greeting, and then we could tell that she was picking out each of us, and checking us off in her mind.

“It’s so good to be home,” she said. “I can’t tell you how I felt when I saw all of you standing on the dock.”

We said it was good to have her home. With the youngest ones hanging onto her skirts, and the rest of us trying to get as close as we could, we started walking down the dock.

“I believe all of you have grown,” Mother told us, “and all of you look so tan and well!”

“You should have seen us with the chicken pox,” Fred said. “We didn’t look so well then.”

“We were sick as dogs,” Dan agreed. “And we took castor oil, too, Mother.”

“That was fine,” Mother said absently. “I knew you’d do …” She stopped dead. “Chicken pox?” she said. “What about chicken pox?”

“Didn’t we write you about that?” Anne asked innocently.

“Mercy Maude,” said Mother. “You know perfectly well you didn’t. Who had it?”

“All of us,” Anne grinned. “We got it the day you left.” She turned to the boys. “You might at least have waited until Mother got home, to break the news.”

“That wasn’t one of the things you told us not to tell,” Fred said defensively.

“You didn’t have anything else, did you?” Mother asked.

Anne shook her head.

“Anything else happen you didn’t write me about?”

“That was the only important thing. Really!”

Mother reached out, over the heads of Bob and Jack, and squeezed Anne impulsively around the waist. Anne looked as if whatever she had been through in the last five weeks had been worth while.

Ernestine personally supervised the final stages of the roast beef, and it was red and tender. There were candles on the dinner table, and we used the good silver. No holly was to be had on Nantucket, at least in the summertime, but we decked the halls with boughs of bayberry.

Mother thought the roast beef was delicious and made a point of complimenting Tom on it.

“It ain’t done quite as much as it ought to be,” Tom told her, “but we got a lot of cooks around here spoiling the cloth.”

“I’m afraid,” Mother said to us after Tom had retired to the kitchen, “that we won’t be able to have roast beef as often as we used to. That’ll be all right, won’t it?”

“We know it,” Martha said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“We’re used to substitutes,” Frank put in.

“We’ll have to rely a little more on less expensive things like—well, liver, cold cuts, fish, and clam chowder.”

“I love clam chowder,” said Ernestine, glaring at Frank. “We’ll have some of that real soon.”

“She eats it until it comes out of her ears,” Frank smirked complacently. Then imitating Tom, he laughed through his nose. “Henc, henc, I’m sorry for what I done, but henc, henc, henc.”

“What’s the matter, dear?” Mother asked. “Is something stuck in your windpipe? Hit him on the back, Bill.”

“There’s nothing the matter with him,” said Bill, who obliged anyway, with all his might.

“It’s just a noise he makes,” Anne explained.

“Oh,” said Mother, obviously relieved. “That’s good. Only I don’t believe I’d ever make a noise like that unless I had to, dear.”

Anne thought we were skating too close to both the clam chowder and the Tom-and-Stick episodes, and was eager to change the subject.

“I think it’s time for Martha’s surprise,” she said. “What do you think, Mother, we only spent $300 of the money you gave us.”

“Why you couldn’t have,” Mother replied. “The tickets to Nantucket must have cost … and Martha wrote she had forgotten her clothes … and the milk bill … You didn’t sell anything, did you, dear?”

“That was my surprise, you speech-maker you,” Martha protested. “You said I could tell her.”

“That’s what I want you to do,” Anne said. “You were in charge of the budget, so you’re the one to tell her.”

“Yes, you tell me, dear,” Mother nodded.

“We spent $296.05,” said Martha, who always knew the bank balance to the last penny.

“I don’t know how you did it,” Mother told us, shaking her head. “Why if we can keep going at that rate, I know everything will be all right.”

“And we’ve been eating like kings,” Ernestine put in.

“I’d like you to help me run the house, just as you’ve been doing,” Mother said. “And I’d like Martha to keep the budget—goodness knows I never could manage money that well.”

“You’ll have to make out a requisition form in triplicate when you want even two cents for a stamp,” Anne warned.

“No she won’t either,” Martha said. “Mother’s an exception. She’ll only have to make out one form, and I’ll fill out the two duplicates.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Mother. She sounded as if she meant it.

Mother had brought each of us a present. Not expensive presents, such as Dad used to bring when he returned from Europe, she explained. Just something to let us know she’d been thinking of us.

She brought out the presents while we were finishing our dessert. There were Czech dolls for Jane and Lillian, and Paris hats for Martha, Ernestine, and Anne. The girls’ presents were a big success.

But the boys had trouble hiding their disappointment, when they unwrapped their packages and found that each contained a blue beret.

“All the men in France are wearing them,” Mother said. “I thought you might like to start the style over here.”

“They’re just what we’ve always wanted,” Frank said stoutly, trying to banish from his mind what might happen to him and Bill if they wore the berets to school.

“I guess,” said Mother, “that I don’t know as much about getting presents for boys as your father did. That’s something I’m going to have to learn, isn’t it?”

“Dad never brought anything better,” Bill protested. “Just old stuff like knives and watches.”

“You’re good boys,” Mother said. “I’ll remember about old stuff like that if I go away again.”

Martha asked if Mother had remembered to bring the bathing suit from Montclair. Mother shook her head.

“I had some business in New York, and couldn’t spare the time to go to Montclair. So I picked you up a suit at Macy’s instead.” She handed Martha a package.

“If it comes below my knees,” said Martha, fumbling with the wrappings, “can I take a hem in it?”