Cheaper by the Dozen (20 page)

"Keep your hands to yourself, Grieves," she said in a tone that indicated her belief that his next step would be to loosen her corset. "Don't ever let me hear you make the fatal mistake of calling me 'Aunt Anne' again. And after this, mind your own"—she looked slowly around the table and then decided to say it anyway—
"damned
business."

There was no doubt after that about who was boss, and Aunt Anne had no further trouble with us. When Dad and Mother returned home, all of us expected to be disciplined. But we had misjudged Aunt Anne.

"You look like you've lost weight," Dad said to her. "The children didn't give you any trouble, did they?"

"Not a bit," said Aunt Anne. "They behaved beautifully, once we got to understand each other. We got along just fine, didn't we, children?"

She reached out fondly and rumpled Billy's hair, which didn't need rumpling.

"Ouch," Billy whispered to her, grinning in relief."It still hurts. Have a heart."

We had better success with another guest whom we set out deliberately to discourage. She was a woman psychologist who came to Montclair every fortnight from New York to give us intelligence tests. It was her own idea, not Dad's or Mother's, but they welcomed her. She was planning to publish a paper about the effects of Dad's teaching methods on our intelligence quotients.

She was thin and sallow, with angular features and a black moustache, not quite droopy enough to hide a horsey set of upper teeth. We hated her and suspected that the feeling was mutual.

At first her questions were legitimate enough: arithmetic, spelling, languages, geography, and the sort of purposeful confusion—about ringing numbers and underlining words—in which some psychologists place particular store.

After we had completed the initial series of tests, she took us one by one into the parlor for personal interviews. Even Mother and Dad weren't allowed to be present.

The interviews were embarrassing and insulting.

"Does it hurt when your mother spanks you?" she asked each of us, peering searchingly into our eyes and breathing into our faces. "You mean your mother never spanks you?" She seemed disappointed. "Well, how about your father? Oh, he does?" That appeared to be heartening news. "Does your mother pay more attention to the other children than she does to you? How many baths do you take a week? Are you sure? Do you think it would be nice to have still another baby brother? You do? Goodness!"

We decided that if Dad and Mother knew the kinds of questions we were being asked, they wouldn't like them any better than we did. Anne and Ernestine had made up their minds to explain the situation to them, when destiny delivered the psychologist into our hands, lock, stock, and moustache.

Mother had been devising a series of job aptitude tests, and the desk by her bed was piled with pamphlets and magazines on psychology. Ernestine was running idly through them one night, while Mother was reading aloud to us from
The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew,
when she came across a batch of intelligence tests. One of them was the test which the New York woman was in the process of giving us—not the embarrassing personal questions, but the business of circling numbers, spelling, and filling in blanks. The correct answers were in the back.

"Snake's hips," Ernestine crowed. "Got it!"

Mother looked up absently from her book. "Don't mix up my work, Ernie," she said. "What are you after?"

"Just want to borrow something," Ern told her.

"Well, don't forget to put it back when you're through with it, will you? Where was I? Oh, I remember. Joel had just said that if necessary he could help support the family by selling papers and shining shoes down at the depot."

She resumed her reading.

The psychologist had already given us the first third of the test. Now Anne and Ernestine tutored us on the second third, until we could run right down a page and fill in the answers without even reading the questions. The last third was an oral word-association test, and they coached us on that, too.

"We're going to be the smartest people she ever gave a test to," Ern told us. "And the queerest, too. Make her think we're smart, but uncivilized because we haven't had enough individual attention. That's what she wants to think, anyway."

"Act nervous and queer," Anne said. "While she's talking to you, fidget and scratch yourself. Be as nasty as you can. That won't require much effort from most of you; there's no need our tutoring you on that."

The next time the psychologist came out from New York, she sat us at intervals around the walls of the parlor, with books on our laps to write on. She passed each of us a copy of the second third of the test.

"When I say commence, work as quickly as you can," she told us. "You have half an hour, and I want you to get as far along in the tests as you can. If any of you should happen to finish before the time is up, bring your papers to me." She looked at her watch. "Ready? Now turn your test papers over and start. Remember, I'm watching you, so don't try to look at your neighbor's paper."

We ran down the pages, filling in the blanks. The older children turned in their papers within ten minutes. Lillian, the youngest being examined, finally turned hers in within twenty.

The psychologist looked at Lillian's paper, and her mouth dropped open.

"How old are you, dearie?" she asked.

"Six," said Lill. "I'll be seven in June."

"There's something radically wrong here," the visitor said. "I haven't had a chance to grade all of your papers, but do you know you have a higher I.Q. than Nicholas Murray Butler?"

"I read a lot," Lill said.

The psychologist glanced at the other tests and shook her head.

"I don't know what to think," she sighed. "You've certainly shown remarkable improvement in the last two weeks. Maybe we'd better get on to the last third of the test. I'm going to go around the room and say a word to each of you. I want you to answer instantly the first word that comes into your mind. Now, won't that be a nice little game?"

Anne twitched. Ernestine scratched. Martha bit her nails.

"We'll go by ages," the visitor continued. "Anne first."

She pointed to Anne. "Knife," said the psychologist.

"Stab, wound, bleed, slit-throat, murder, disembowel, scream, shriek," replied Anne, without taking a breath and so fast that the words flowed together.

"Jesus," said the psychologist. "Let me get that down. You're just supposed to answer one word, but let me get it all down anyway." She panted in excitement as she scribbled in her pad.

"All right, Ernestine. Your turn. Just one word. Black."

"Jack," said Ernestine.

The visitor looked at Martha. "Foot."

"Kick," said Martha.

"Hair."

"Louse," said Frank.

"Flower."

"Stink," said Bill.

The psychologist was becoming more and more excited. She looked at Lill.

"Droppings," said Lill, upsetting the apple cart.

"But I haven't even asked you your word yet!" the visitor exclaimed. "So that's it. Let me see what your word was going to be. I thought so. Your word was 'bird.'And they told you to say 'droppings,' didn't they?"

Lill nodded sheepishly.

"And they told you just how to fill out the rest of the test, didn't they? I suppose the answers were given to you by your Mother, so you would impress me with how smart you are."

We started to snicker and then to roar. But the psychologist didn't think it was funny.

"You're all nasty little cheats," she said. "Don't think for a minute you pulled the wool over my eyes. I saw through you from the start."

She picked up her wraps and started for the front door. Dad had heard us laughing, and came out of his office to see what was going on. If there was any excitement, he wanted to be in on it.

"Well," he beamed, "it sounds as if it's been a jolly test. Running along so soon? Tell me, frankly, what do you think of my family?"

She looked at us and there was an evil glint in her eye.

"I'm glad you asked me that," she whinnied. "Unquestionably, they are smart. Too damned smart for their breeches. Does that answer your question? As to whether they were aided and abetted in an attempted fraud, I cannot say. But my professional advice is to bear down on them. A good thrashing right now, from the oldest to the youngest, might be just the thing."

She slammed the front door, and Dad looked glumly at us.

"All right," he sighed. "What have you been up to? That woman's going to write a paper on the family. What did you do to her?"

Anne twitched. Ernestine scratched. Martha bit her nails. Dad was getting angry.

"Hold still and speak up. No nonsense!"

"Do you want another baby brother?" Anne asked.

"Does it hurt when your Mother spanks you?" said Ernestine.

"When did you have your last bath?" Martha inquired. "Are you sure? Hmmm?"

Dad raised his hands in surrender and shook his head. He looked old and tired now.

"Sometimes I don't know if it's worth it," he said. "Why didn't you come and tell your Mother and me about it, if she was asking questions like that? Oh, well... On the other hand... Why, the bearded old goat!"

Dad started to smile.

"If she writes a paper about any of that I'll sue her for everything she owns, including her birth certificate. If she has one."

He opened the door into his office.

"Come in and give me all the frightful details."

"After you, Dr. Butler," Ernestine told Lill.

A few minutes later, Mother came into the office, where we were perched on the edges of her and Dad's desks. The stenographers had abandoned their typewriters and were crowded around us.

"What's the commotion, Frank?" she asked Dad. "I could hear you bellowing all the way up in the attic."

"Oh, Lord," Dad wheezed. "Start at the beginning, kids. I want your mother to hear this, too. The bearded old goat—not you, Lillie."

On Friday nights, Dad and Mother often went to a lecture or a movie by themselves, holding hands as they went out to the barn to get Foolish Carriage.

But on Saturday nights, Mother stayed home with the babies, while Dad took the rest of us to the movies. We had early supper so that we could get to the theater by seven o'clock, in time for the first show.

"We're just going to stay through one show tonight," Dad told us on the way down. "None of this business about seeing the show through a second time. None of this eleven o'clock stuff. No use to beg me."

When the movie began, Dad became as absorbed as we, and noisier. He forgot all about us, and paid no attention when we nudged him and asked for nickels to put in the candy vendors on the back of the seats. He laughed so hard at the comedies that sometimes he embarrassed us and we tried to tell him that people were looking at him.When the feature was sad, he kept trumpeting his nose and wiping his eyes.

When the lights went on at the end of the first show, we always begged him to change his mind, and let us stay and see it again. He put on an act of stubborn resistance, but always yielded in the end.

"Well, you were less insolent than usual this week," he said. "But I hate to have you stay up until all hours of the night."

"Tomorrow's Sunday. We can sleep late."

"And your mother will give me Hail Columbia when I bring you home late."

"If you think it's all right, Mother will think it's all right."

"Well, all right. We'll make an exception this time. Since your hearts are so set on it, I guess I can sit through it again."

Once, after a whispered message by Ernestine had passed along the line, we picked up our coats at the end of the first show and started to file out of the aisle.

"What are you up to?" Dad called after us in a hurt tone, and loud enough so that people stood up to see what was causing the disturbance. "Where do you think you're going? Do you want to walk home? Come back here and sit down."

We said he had told us on the way to the theater that we could just sit through one show that night.

"Well, don't you want to see it again? After all, you've been good as gold this week. If your hearts are set on it, I guess I could sit through it again. I don't mind, particularly."

We said we were a little sleepy, that we didn't want to be all tired out tomorrow and that we didn't want Mother to be worried because we had stayed out late.

"Aw, come on," Dad begged. "Don't be spoil sports. I'll take care of your mother. Let's see it again. The evening's young. Tomorrow's Sunday. You can sleep late."

We filed smirking back to our seats.

"You little fiends," Dad whispered as we sat down. "You spend hours figuring out ways to gang up on me, don't you? I've got a good mind to leave you all home next week and come to the show by myself."

The picture that made the biggest impression on Dad was a twelve-reel epic entided
Over the Hill to the Poor House,
or something like that. It was about a wispy widow lady who worked her poor old fingers to the bone for her children, only to end her days in the alms house after they turned against her.

For an hour and a half, while Dad manned the pumps with his handkerchief, the woman struggled to keep her family together. She washed huge vats of clothes. She ironed an endless procession of underwear. Time after time, single-handed and on her hands and knees, she emptied all the cuspidors and scrubbed down the lobby of Grand Central Station.

Her children were ashamed of her and complained because they didn't have store-bought clothes. When the children were grown up, they fought over having her come to live with them. Finally, when she was too old to help even with the housework, they turned her out into the street. There was a snowstorm going on, too.

The fade-out scene, the one that had Dad actually wringing out his handkerchief, showed the old woman, shivering in a worn and inadequate hug-me-tight, limping slowly up the hill to the poor house.

Dad was still red-eyed and blowing his nose while we were drinking our sodas after the movie, and all of us felt depressed.