Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson (33 page)

I got on the team that week, first as a substitute, and then the Hammond boy moved away and I got a chance at being regular pitcher. After a while Mallie started making Mother have breakfast in bed, and the house began filling up weekends with Dottie’s boyfriends, and twice they finished all the pie.

Somehow Mallie did everything so fast that it seemed as though she could straighten a room just by standing in the doorway and looking around hard. She used to get the dishes done so fast, Dottie and I never had time to get in and help her. I used to ask her how she did it, even after Mother and Dottie got tired of asking questions that were never answered, but Mallie only laughed at me and said, “Magic.”

I think it
was
magic, too. Sometimes I’d bring the team home with me—there were about fifteen of us, counting substitutes—and we’d sneak over the fence as quietly as we could and tiptoe up to the back porch and by the time we got there Mallie would have lemonade and cookies ready for us, even if she’d been somewhere in the front of the house all the time and couldn’t have seen us.

Once Dottie, who had turned sweet-tempered and polite all of a sudden, came out into the kitchen and said, “I wish you’d teach
me
some of that magic, Mallie.”

Mallie was making a salad but she looked at Dottie and said, “What do you need magic for, Missy? You’re doing all right without any.”

“You
know,” Dottie said. She sat down at the table next to me and Mallie just went on making the salad around us. “Look at all you can do—making dresses and doing housework without lifting a finger, and all that.”

“I only do work fast so’s I’ll have more time to do other things,” Mallie said. “Like trying to get dinner with two good-for-nothing lazy kids sitting smack in the middle of my salad. I’m real busy and busy people don’t have time for everything they want to do. So I make time.”

“That’s it,” Dottie said. “I’m real busy, too. I want to learn some magic.”

Mallie laughed. “Tell you what I’ll do, honey. I’ll teach you how to make a pie. That’s all the magic
you’ll
ever need.”

And golly if she didn’t teach Dottie right then and there how to make a pie; just pushed the salad off to one side and went to work. I could have laughed myself silly watching Dottie. It was the first time she had cooked anything in her life, I guess, and Mallie stood over her and really made her learn. It was a pretty good pie, too—apple. And after that Mallie taught Dottie a lot of other things—and she told Dottie over and over again, “That’s all the magic
you’ll1
ever need.”

Then again, about a month later, when it was only a couple of days to the end of school and the weather was already hot, I came home from swimming with the fellows to find Mother out in the kitchen with a telegram. She was saying anxiously to Mallie, “It’s just
got
to be nice, that’s all. If we’d only known in time…”

It seems that the telegram had been misdirected and had reached Mother at five in the afternoon instead of in the morning as it should. It wouldn’t have done much good to know earlier anyway, because it was Sunday and we still wouldn’t have been prepared. The telegram said that Uncle Ralph and Aunt Gertrude were coming that evening on the six o’clock train and would stay over till Monday. They were an aunt and uncle of my dad’s and everyone tried to be nice to them because they were always nice to everybody in spite of being sort of fussy. Mother wanted to have a fancy dinner for them but all the stores were closed for Sunday. Mallie was thinking hard and Mother went on. “It means dinner tonight and fixing up the guest room and I don’t know
what
else.”

“Things will be all right,” Mallie said. “No use worrying.”

“Isn’t there some grocery open?” Mother said. “Jerry could run out and get
something.”

“There’s Spencer’s,” I said. “I could get there and back in time but he doesn’t have much.”

“Just let me think,” Mallie said. Mother and I were both quiet while Mallie sat and figured. “I’ll tell you,” she said at last. “You just give me a little time. It ought to take you a good fifteen minutes to get to the station and another fifteen back. There’s a half hour. Then you sit your aunt and uncle down in the living room and give them a glass of that sherry we have in the pantry. That ought to make it about seven. If I can’t do anything by then we might’s well give up.”

“I’ll go to Spencer’s—” I suggested again, but she waved her hand at me.

“I can manage, thanks, son,” she said. “I just remembered that hat of yours, Mrs. Livingston, the one with the birds. I don’t like hats trimmed with birds but I guess I can stand it for once. You bring that right downstairs and, Jerry, you run and get me a handful of down out of a pillow and swipe your sister’s cotton dress with the pattern of cherries on it. Now, hurry.”

Well, I sneaked the dress out of Dottie’s closet and ripped open a pillow and got a handful of the stuffing, and tore down to the kitchen with it. Mother had brought in her hat with the two birds on it. It looked funny there on the kitchen table with the pillow down and Dottie’s dress.

“Get me some gravel,” Mallie said, and I brought her a handful from the driveway. So there they were—dress, hat, down, and gravel. I looked at her sort of cross-eyed and she said, “You march upstairs and change to some decent clothes. Thank goodness you’ve been swimming today—at least you’re clean.”

Dottie came in just as Mother and I were ready to go to the station, so we all three piled into a taxi and went to meet Uncle Ralph and Aunt Gertrude. And I was glad I had changed my shirt because they brought me a football and they brought some fancy girl’s stuff for Dottie, and Aunt Gertrude had embroidered an apron for Mother.

We sat in the living room and they had sherry until Mallie said dinner was ready. Mother sat at the head of the table and tried to look serious while we were eating, but she kept starting to laugh and so did I and it made everything cheerful. Because we had broiled squab with a cherry sauce, and once when Mother meant to tell me I was listening too much instead of eating, she slipped and said, “Jerry, eat your hat.” That made me choke and then all I could do was pass her the dish of wild rice and say very solemnly, “Have some gravel, Mother?”

We also had lettuce and tomato salad. When Mallie passed it I whispered to her, “Where did you get
this?”
and she said, “I picked it in the garden,” which shut
me
up.

And when Mallie brought the dessert I thought for a minute it was the down from the pillow but it turned out to be baked Alaska. Uncle Ralph stood up and bowed to Mallie at the end of dinner and said it was the finest meal he had ever tasted.

After dinner we sat around and talked for a while and then we all took Uncle Ralph and Aunt Gertrude up to the guest room. Mallie had done one of her fastest jobs on the room, and it was as neat and clean as anything you ever saw. There were fresh curtains, which looked suspiciously like the veil from Mother’s hat, and a big bunch of flowers in a bowl. I was the only one who noticed how much they looked like the flowers on the wallpaper in my room, although Aunt Gertrude asked what kind they were and no one knew. I said something to Mallie about it the next day and she laughed and took a swing at me, which I ducked, as usual.

Things went on like that all summer. Dottie started wearing a college fraternity pin but she gave it back before high school opened. Mother had something done to her hair and bought a lot of new clothes. And, as I said, I got to be captain of the team and a pretty good pitcher after all. And then one day while we were all having lunch together in the kitchen Mallie said, “Mrs. Livingston, I’ve got to be thinking about leaving one of these days.”

We all tried to argue with her but no one could convince her. All I could say, finally, was “Will you come back and see us sometime?” and she said, “Not unless you need me for something.” Then she winked the way she always did and said, “But you’ll be hearing from me sooner or later.”

She wouldn’t say where she was going, or why, but she did say that she was getting old. She looked about sixty then, but she said she was really old.

“I find these days,” she said to Mother, “that instead of going upstairs to make the beds, I’d rather just sit in the kitchen and
wish
them done. And that’s not good.” She shook her head. “I’ve got to get off by myself and think myself younger.”

“You can make yourself
younger?”
Mother said real fast, but Mallie just laughed and said, “Only by thinking so, Mrs. Livingston.
You
wouldn’t be happy any younger than you are, not with two grown children. And you’d be surprised what’s coming along for you.”

Mallie added that she would go in a week and then Dottie, who was, as I say, getting politer but not any smarter, said, “Listen, Dopey, before Mallie goes, why don’t you ask her to do something for that football team of yours?”

“Baseball, fathead,” I said.

“Get her to fix it for you,” Dottie said, “so you’ll win all the time.”

Well,
there
was a silly idea. Trust a girl to think of it. “Listen,” I told her very slowly and clearly so she could understand, “with me pitching, magic is
not
necessary.”

Mallie winked at me and pulled my hair. “Can’t use magic on boys, anyway,” she said. “Just wears away on their tough hides.”

Well, she left the next week and then school started again and summer ended. After a while we sort of stopped talking about Mallie, because so much was happening all the time. I used to think about her sometimes during baseball season or when I was eating a cherry pie that didn’t have much taste, and once in a while Mother would say how much she missed Mallie’s being so cheerful around the house. Then when Dottie was packing to go away to college she took out the blue dress with the dandelions on it and tried it on once more before she put it in her trunk.

“This was always one of my favorite dresses,” she said, looking dreamy. “I wore it to the spring dance with that boy—remember him?” she asked Mother and Mother nodded.

“You know,” Mother said slowly, looking at Dottie, “that dress is just as fresh now as it was when it came. I don’t believe it’s ever going to wear out.”

“It’s magic,” Dottie said. “I wore it to the spring dance and to the country club dance last summer and then the senior ball and I guess dozens of other times.”

“Remember dinner with Uncle Ralph and Aunt Gertrude?” I said. “Remember the gravel?”

“And my hat!” Mother said. We all laughed.

“I’ll never forget Dottie standing there all hung with curtains,” I said.

“Or your face when you saw the dress,” Dottie said. “Everyone asks me where I got it.”

“I guess Mallie ought to be a family secret,” Mother said. “Imagine trying to tell people that your dress—and that dinner—and the housework—and—”

“Dottie’s cooking,” I said.

“And Jerry’s ball team,” Dottie said.

“No!” I put in, but Mother went on quickly, “Anyway, imagine trying to tell anyone all of that was
magic”

“Well,” I said, “magic or no magic, she was sure some cook.”

Mother and I saw Dottie off on the train. Mother got sort of tearful and it was strange even to me to have Dottie gone. But then the time kept going on and Dottie came home for Christmas and she and Mother made the blue dress over so Dottie could wear it to some fancy party. I was sorry when they took the dandelions off; somehow they reminded me of Mallie as much as anything else I knew.

Then in the spring Mother pulled her big surprise, getting married again. Dottie came home from college specially, and things were pretty exciting for a while. We heard from Mallie at last on the morning of the day Mother was getting married. Mother was all dressed and ready for the wedding to start, and she and Dottie and I were sitting there together sort of having one last family talk, when someone brought up a package that had just arrived. I think we all guessed who it was from right away, just from the sudden way it arrived. Mother took out the card and read: “With love, from Mallie.” Then she looked at Dottie and me and said, “Imagine her remembering us after all this time!”

“I figured she would,” I said.

“So did I,” said Dottie, and that surprised me a little.

Inside the package was a mirror with blue flowers painted around the edge and funny old-fashioned cupid faces on the corners. Mother liked it the minute she saw it, and set it up on her dresser. And when she looked in it, she looked sort of surprised, and then she smiled and began to touch her hair, the way women do. She called Dottie and Dottie looked in the mirror and
she
began to smile and fiddle with her hair, and the two of them were laughing and fooling around with the mirror and I sat there and got more and more nervous because I had to walk down the aisle with Mother and I was sure I’d trip.

Someone finally called them from downstairs and they went down together, looking all excited and pretty. Before I followed them I sneaked a look in the mirror for myself. It was funny; I looked different. My face was thinner, somehow, without that awful pink look you have when you’re what they call a healthy boy. And there was a shadow across the mirror that made it look almost as though I had a mustache, like a big-league pitcher, maybe, or an explorer. I looked really grown up, so I went downstairs, all set for the wedding.

All day they kept going upstairs, Mother and Dottie and all the other women who were there, and they’d all take a look in the mirror and come downstairs again all smiles. I even took another couple of looks myself, when there was no one else around.

After the wedding Mother put the mirror in the hall downstairs so that everyone coming in or going out of the house could look in it. You’d be surprised at how it seems to make people feel pleased with themselves. I keep thinking what Mallie would have said if I asked her why the mirror made people feel so much handsomer and smarter. She’d wink at me, as always, and say, “Magic.”

I guess it
was
magic, all of it—though I wouldn’t like to say for sure. All of it, that is, except that game when my team beat the Nine-Man Wonders. I pitched that game and I
know
.