Cheaper by the Dozen (25 page)

"Let you come down, nothing," said Martha. "You evil-minded thing you. Let you come down and spread the story all over town about how you climbed our cherry tree and put one over on the Gilbreth family? I should say not."

Anne swung the torch nearer the pile of refuse.

"Look out," the Peeping Tom shrieked. "You wouldn't roast me alive in cold blood, would you? By God, I believe you would!"

"Of course we would," Frank said. "Dead men tell no tales."

Ernestine stuck her head out of the window.

"Have you got him trapped?" she called. "Good. I've been fiddling with the buttons on my dress so long I'm about to wear all the skin off the tips of my fingers. Is he who I think he is?"

"None other," said Anne. "Motorcycle Mac himself, in the soon-to-be-seared flesh. Treed like a tree toad in a tree."

"Don't cremate him until I get down there," Ernestine begged. "I want to see the fun."

Motorcycle Mac was alternately whimpering and cursing when Ernestine joined the ring around the cherry tree.

"I always thought he was a nasty boy anyway," Ernestine said. "Sheiks are hard to find, and goodness knows I don't have too many of them. But he's one I'll be glad to sacrifice."

"I don't blame you," said Martha. "He's a particularly disagreeable one, all right. He's even a cry baby. I hope when it comes my time to cash in my chips I'll be able to go out with a trace of a smile on my beautiful lips, like Wally Reid."

"Yes," said Anne."I have the feeling that if anyone has to be cremated, it couldn't happen to a more objectionable sheik."

We had counted on the commotion to attract Mother's attention, and now she opened her window and put her head out.

"What in the world's going on out there?" she called. "What are you doing with that torch? Which one of you is swinging it? That doesn't look safe to me, children."

"I have it," Anne said. "It's all right, Mother. We've trapped a skunk up in the cherry tree, and we're trying to make him come down."

Mother sniffed the air suspiciously.

"I thought I smelled something," she said. "Now, listen, children, I don't think you ought to burn up that cherry tree for any old skunk.Your father is devoted to that tree, and he's devoted to cherry pie. Just come on in the house, and let's see if the skunk won't come down and go away by itself."

"Oh, we weren't really going to burn the tree," Ernestine giggled. "We just wanted to scare Hell out of the skunk."

"Ernestine, I forbid that kind of Eskimo language," Mother said, in a shocked tone. "Now I think you'd better come into the house, all of you. It's bedtime, and even a skunk is entitled to some peace and quiet.You've scared him enough for one night. I'll bet his eyes are about to pop out of his head with what he's seen tonight."

Mother disappeared inside the window.

"I'll bet," Ernestine said for the benefit of Motorcycle Mac, "that his eyes were about to pop out of his head with what he
thought
he was going to see. Now, slink down out of that cherry tree, you rat you."

"If Dad were here," Bill said, "he'd probably blind him, like they did back in Lady Godiva's day."

"That's just what Dad would do," Anne agreed. "I wish we had thought of that ourselves."

"Should I go get a hatpin?" Frank asked hopefully.

"Too late now," Anne said. "It's past your bedtime. But maybe he'll come back again some other night."

None of us children knew it, but Dad had had a bad heart for years, and now Dr. Burton told him he was going to die.

"We noticed that Dad had grown thinner. For the first time in twenty-five years he weighed less than two hundred pounds. He joked about how strange it was to be able to see his feet again. His hands had begun to tremble a little and his face was gray. Sometimes, when he was playing baseball with the older boys or rolling on the floor with Bob and Jane, he'd stop suddenly and say he guessed he had had enough for today. There was a trace of a stagger as he walked away.

He was fifty-five years old, and we supposed his symptoms were those of approaching old age. Certainly it never occurred to any of us that Dad had any intention of dying until he was good and ready to die.

He had known about the bad heart even before Bob and Jane were born. He and Mother had discussed it, and the possibility that she would be left a widow with all the children.

"But I don't think those doctors know what they're talking about," Dad said.

Mother knew the answer Dad wanted.

"I don't see how twelve children would be much more trouble than ten," she told him, "and personally I like to finish what I start. I don't know about you."

The bad heart was one of the principal reasons for Dad's home instruction programs. It was also why he had organized the house on an efficiency basis, so that it would operate smoothly without supervision; so that the older children would be responsible for the younger ones. He knew a load was going to be thrown on Mother, and he wanted to lessen it as much as he could.

"Maybe tomorrow, maybe in six months," Dr. Burton told Dad now. "A year at the outside if you stop work and stay in bed."

"Don't think you can scare me," Dad said. "You doctors have been telling me for three years not to subscribe to any new magazines. Well, I don't believe a word of it. For one thing, I'm in my prime. And for another, I'm too busy."

"Still the Old Pioneer," Dr. Burton grinned.

"Don't think you can scare me," Dad repeated. "I'll be in the amen corner when they're laying you away. I'll see you in church, even if you don't see me."

Dad went home and wrote a letter to a friend, Miss Myrtell Canavan, the Boston brain specialist.

"Dear Mortuary Myrt: If and when I die, I'd like my brain to go to Harvard, where they are doing those brain experiments you told me about. I'd like you to handle the details. My hat size is seven and three-eighths, in case you want to get a jar ready. Don't think this letter means I'm getting ready to go any time soon, because I'm not. I'll leave a copy of this where Lillie will see it when the time comes, and she'll get in touch with you. The next time I see you, I don't want you casting any appraising glances at my cranium."

With the letter mailed, Dad shrugged thoughts of death out of his mind. The World Power Conference and the International Management Conference were going to meet in eight months in England and Czechoslovakia, respectively. Dad accepted invitations to speak at both.

The post-war industrial expansion had resulted in more and more emphasis being placed on motion study. For the first time, both Dad and Mother had more clients than they could handle. Dad went from factory to factory, installing his time-saving systems, reducing worker fatigue, so as to speed up production.

He died on June 14, 1924, three days before he was to sail for Europe for the two conferences.

Dad had walked from our house down to the Lackawanna Station, a distance of about a mile, where he intended to catch a commuters' train for New York. He had a few minutes before the train left, and he telephoned home to Mother from a pay booth in the station.

"Say, Boss," he said, "on the way down here I had an idea about saving motions on packing those soapflakes for Lever Brothers. See what you think..."

Mother heard a thud and the line went silent. She jiggled the receiver hook.

"I'm sorry." It was the voice of the operator. "The party who called you has hung up."

Jane, the baby, was two years old. Anne, the oldest, was taking her examinations at Smith, where she was a sophomore.

It was Saturday morning. The younger children were playing in the yard. Most of the older ones, members of the purchasing committees, were in town doing the marketing. Six or seven neighbors set out in automobiles to round up those who were missing. The neighbors wouldn't say what the trouble was.

"Your mother wants you home, dear," they told each of us. "There's been an accident. Just slide into the car and I'll drive you home."

When we arrived at the front of the house, we knew the accident was death. Fifteen or twenty cars were parked in the driveway and on the front lawn. Mother? It couldn't be Mother, because they had said Mother wanted us home. Daddy? Accidents didn't happen to Daddy. Somebody fell off his bicycle and was run over? Maybe. All the girls were terrible bicycle riders. Bill was a good rider but took too many chances.

We jumped out of the car and ran toward the house. Jackie was sitting on a terrace near the sidewalk. His face was smudged where he had rubbed his hands.

"Our Daddy's dead," he sobbed.

Dad was a part of all of us, and a part of all of us died then.

They dressed him in his Army uniform, and we went in and looked in the coffin. With his eyes closed and his face gone slack, he seemed stern and almost forbidding. There was no repose there and no trace left of the laugh wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

We thought that when they came after him, Daddy must have given them a real fight.We bet they had their hands full with Daddy.

Mother found the carbon of the letter to Dad's friend, and the brain went to Harvard. After the cremation, Mother chartered a boat and went out into the Atlantic. Somewhere out there, standing alone in the bow, she scattered his ashes. That was the way Dad wanted it.

There was a change in Mother after Dad died. A change in looks and a change in manner. Before her marriage, all Mother's decisions had been made by her parents. After the marriage, the decisions were made by Dad. It was Dad who suggested having a dozen children, and that both of them become efficiency experts. If his interests had been in basket weaving or phrenology, she would have followed him just as readily.

While Dad lived, Mother was afraid of fast driving, of airplanes, of walking alone at night. When there was lightning, she went in a dark closet and held her ears. When things went wrong at dinner, she sometimes burst into tears and had to leave the table. She made public speeches, but she dreaded them.

Now, suddenly, she wasn't afraid any more, because there was nothing to be afraid of. Now nothing could upset her because the thing that mattered most had been upset. None of us ever saw her weep again.

It was two days after Dad's death, and the house still smelled of flowers. Mother called a meeting of the Family Council. It seemed natural now for her to sit at Dad's place in the chairman's chair, with a pitcher of ice water at her right.

Mother told us that there wasn't much money-most of it had gone back into the business. She said she had talked by telephone with her mother, and that her mother wanted all of us to move out to California.

Anne interrupted to say she planned to leave college anyway and get a job. Ernestine, who had graduated from high school the night before Dad died, said she didn't care anything about college either.

"Please wait until I'm finished," Mother said, and there was a new note of authority in her voice. "There is another alternative, but it hinges on your being able to take care of yourselves. And it would involve some sacrifices from all of us. So I want you to make the decision.

"I can go ahead with your father's work. We can keep the office open here. We can keep the house, but we would have to let the cook go."

"Tom, too?" we asked. "We couldn't let Tom go, could we? He wouldn't go anyway."

"No, not Tom. But we would have to sell the car and live very simply. Still, we could be together. And Anne would go back to college. You know your father wants all of you to go to college.

"Do you want to try it? Can you run the house and take care of things until I get back?"

"Get back from where, Mother?" we asked.

"If you want to try it here," she told us, and she actually rapped the table, "I'm going on that boat tomorrow; the one your father planned to take. He had the tickets. I'm going to give those speeches for him in London and Prague, by jingo. I think that's the way your father wants it. But the decision is up to you."

Ernestine and Martha went upstairs to help Mother pack. Anne disappeared into the kitchen to plan supper. Frank and Bill started down town to see the used car dealers about selling the automobile.

"Better tell them to bring a tow car," Lill called after the boys. "Foolish Carriage never starts for anybody but Daddy."

Someone once asked Dad: "But what do you want to save time for? What are you going to do with it?"

"For work, if you love that best," said Dad. "For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure." He looked over the top of his pince-nez. "For mumblety-peg, if that's where your heart lies."