The Cost of Living (11 page)

“Shall I give your love to Jane and Ernestine?” she said. But Mr. Kennedy, worn out with his day, seemed to be falling asleep.

Back at the hotel, Jane and Ernestine were waiting in the upper hall. They clung to Mrs. Kennedy, as if her presence had reminded them of something. Touched, Mrs. Kennedy said nothing about the mud on their shoes but instead praised their rosy faces. They hung about, close to her, while she rested on the chaise longue in her room before dinner. “How I should love to trade my days for yours,” she said suddenly, thinking not only of their magic future but of these days that were, for them, a joyous and repeated holiday.

“Didn't you have fun today?” said Jane, leaning on her mother's feet.

“Fun! Well, not what you chicks would call fun.”

They descended to dinner together; the children held on to her hands, one on each side. They showed, for once, a nice sensibility, she thought. Perhaps they were arriving at that special age a mother dreams of, the age of gratitude and awareness. In the dining room, propped against the mustard jar, was an envelope with scrolls and curlicues under the name “Kennedy.” Inside was a note from Frau Stengel explaining that, because she was expecting a child and needed all her strength for the occasion, she could no longer give Jane and Ernestine their lessons. So delicately and circuitously did she explain her situation that Mrs. Kennedy was left with the impression that Frau Stengel was expecting the visit of a former pupil. She thought it a strange way of letting her know. I wonder what she means by “harmony of spirit,” she thought. The child must be a terror. She was not at all anxious to persuade Frau Stengel to change her mind; the incident of the book at breakfast, the mention of movies, the mud on the children's shoes all suggested it was time for someone new.

“Is it bad news?” said Jane.

Mrs. Kennedy was touched. “You mustn't feel things so,” she said kindly. “No, it is only that Frau Stengel won't be your governess anymore. She is expecting”—she glanced at the letter again and, suddenly getting the drift of it, folded it quickly and went on—“a little boy or girl for a visit.”

“Our age?”

“I don't know,” said Mrs. Kennedy vaguely. Would this be a good occasion, she wondered, to begin telling them about…about…But no, not in a hotel dining room, not over a plate of alphabet soup. “I suppose I could stay home for a few days, until we find someone, and we could do lessons together. Would you like that?” They looked at her without replying. “We could do educational things, like nature walks,” she said. “Why, what ever is the matter? Are you so unhappy about Frau Stengel?”

“Is he dead?” said Jane.

“Who?”

“Our father,” said Jane in a quavering voice that carried to every table and on to the kitchen.

“Good heavens!” Mrs. Kennedy glanced quickly around the dining room; everyone had heard. Damp clouds of sympathy were forming around the table. “As a matter of fact, he is much better,” she said loudly and briskly. “Perhaps, to be reassured, you ought to see him. Would you like that?”

“Oh, yes.”

She was perplexed but gratified. “Father didn't want you to see him when he was so ill,” she explained. “He wanted you to remember him as he was.”

“In case he died?”

“I think we'll go upstairs,” said Mrs. Kennedy, pushing back her chair. They followed her across the room and up the staircase without protest. She had never seen them looking so odd. “You seem all pinched,” she said, examining them by the light between their beds. “And a few minutes ago you seemed so rosy! Where are my little Renoir faces? I'm getting you liver tablets tomorrow. You'd better go to bed.”

It was early, but they made no objection. “Are you really going to be home tomorrow?” said Jane.

“Well, yes. I can't think of anything else to do, for the moment.”

“He's dead,” said Jane positively.

“Really,” said their mother, exasperated. “If you don't stop this at once, I don't know what I'll do. It's morbid.”

“Will you read to us?” said Ernestine, shoeless and in her petticoat.

“Read?” Mrs. Kennedy said. “No, I couldn't.” With quick, tugging motions, she began to braid their hair for the night. “I don't even want to speak. I want to rest my voice.”

“Then could you just sit here?” said Jane. “Could we have the light?”

“Why?” said Mrs. Kennedy, snapping elastic on the end of a braid. “Have you been having bad dreams?”

“I don't know,” said Jane, standing uncertainly by her bed.

“Healthy children don't dream,” her mother said, confident that this was so. “You have no reason whatever to dream.” She rose and put the hairbrush away. “Into bed, now, both of you.”

They crept wretchedly into their separate beds. Mrs. Kennedy kissed each of them and opened the window. She was at the door, her hand on the light switch, when Jane said, “Can God punish you for something?”

Mrs. Kennedy dropped her hand. She had been, she found with annoyance, about to say vaguely, “Well, that all depends.” She said instead, “I don't know.”

It was worse than anything the children had bargained for. “If
she
doesn't know—” said Ernestine. It was not clear whom she was addressing. “—then who does?”

“Nobody, really,” said Mrs. Kennedy. They had certainly chosen a singular approach to the subject, and an odd time to speak of it, she thought, but curiosity of this sort should always be dealt with as it came up. “Many people think they know, one way or the other, but it is impossible for a thinking person—Father will tell you about it,” she finished. “We'll arrange a visit very soon.”

“If you don't
know
,” said Jane from her pillow, “then we don't know what can happen.” She lay back and pulled the bedsheet up to her eyes. Mrs. Kennedy put out the light, promising again an interesting talk with their father, who would explain all over again how he didn't know, either, and why.

Just before going to bed, shortly after ten o'clock, Mrs. Kennedy softly re-entered the children's room. She carried a large dish of applesauce, two spoons, and two buttered rolls for the girls to discover in the morning. The room was totally dark, and stuffy; someone—one of the children—had closed the window and drawn the heavy double curtains straight across. Groping in the dark to their bedside table, she put down her burden of food, and then, as quietly as she could, pulled the draperies to one side. Moonlight filled the squares of the window. The breeze that came in when she unlatched the window smelled of snow. In the bright, cold, clear night, the lights from the villages down below blinked and wavered like stars. It was not often that Mrs. Kennedy had time to enjoy or contemplate something not directly dependent on herself or fated by one of her or her husband's decisions. For nearly a full minute, she stood perfectly still and admired the night. Then she remembered one of the reasons she had come into the room, and bent over to draw the covers up over her daughters.

Ernestine had got into bed with Jane, which was odd; they lay facing the same direction, like two question marks. With one hand Ernestine limply clutched at her sister's braids. Both children had wormed down into the middle of the bed, well below the pillow, under a tent of blankets; it was a wonder they hadn't smothered.

Mrs. Kennedy drew back the blankets and gently pulled Ernestine away. Without waking, but muttering something, Ernestine got up and walked to her own bed. The hair at her temples was wet, and she generated the nearly feverish warmth of sleeping children. Sleeping, she put her thumb in her mouth. Mrs. Kennedy turned to Jane and pulled her carefully up to the pillow. “I left my book outside,” said Jane urgently and distinctly. Straightening up, Mrs. Kennedy gave the covers a final pat. She looked down at her little girls, frowning; they seemed at this moment not like little Renoirs, not like little dolls, but like rather ordinary children who for some reason of their own had shut and muffled the window and then crept into one bed, the better to hide. She was tempted to wake Jane, or Ernestine, and ask what it was all about, this solicitude for Mr. Kennedy, this irrelevant talk of God. Perhaps Frau Stengel, in some blundering way, had mentioned her pregnancy. Despairing, Mrs. Kennedy wished she could gather her children up, one under each arm, and carry them off to a higher mountain, an emptier hotel, where nothing and no one could interfere, or fill their minds with the kind of thought she feared and detested. Their
minds
. Was she really, all alone, without Mr. Kennedy to help her, expected to cope with their minds as well as everything else?

But I am exaggerating, she thought, looking out at the peaceful night. They haven't so much as begun to think, about anything. Without innocence, after all, there was no beauty, and no one could deny the beauty of Jane and Ernestine. She did not look at them again as they lay, damp and vulnerable, in their beds, but, instantly solaced with the future and what it contained for them, she saw them once again drifting away on a sea of admiration, the surface unmarred, the interior uncorrupted by thought or any one of the hundred indecisions that were the lot of less favored human beings. Meanwhile, of course, they had still to grow up—but after all what was there between this night and the magic time to come but a link of days, the limpid days of children? For, she thought, smiling in the dark, pleased at the image, were not their days like the lights one saw in the valley at night, starry, indistinguishable one from the other? She must tell that to Mr. Kennedy, she thought, drawing away from the window. He would be sure to agree.

1953

A
T TANGIER
it was surprisingly cold, even for December. The sea was lead, the sky cloudy and low. Most of the passengers going ashore for the day came to breakfast wrapped in scarves and sweaters. They were, most of them, thin-skinned, elderly people, less concerned with the prospect of travel than with getting through another winter in relative comfort; on bad days, during the long crossing from the West Indies, they had lain in deck chairs, muffled as mummies, looking stricken and deceived. When Emma Ellenger came into the breakfast lounge barelegged, in sandals, wearing a light summer frock, there was a low flurry of protest. Really, Emma's mother should take more care! The child would catch her death.

Feeling the disapproval almost as an emanation, like the salt one breathed in the air, Emma looked around for someone who liked her—Mr. Cowan, or the Munns. There were the Munns, sitting in a corner, frowning over their toast, coffee, and guidebooks. She waved, although they had not yet seen her, threaded her way between the closely spaced tables, and, without waiting to be asked, sat down.

Miss and Mrs. Munn looked up with a single movement. They were daughter and mother, but so identically frizzy, tweedy, and elderly that they might have been twins. Mrs. Munn, the kindly twin, gazed at Emma with benevolent, rather popping brown eyes, and said, “Child, you'll freeze in that little dress. Do tell your mother—now, don't forget to tell her—that the North African winter can be treacherous, very treacherous indeed.” She tapped one of the brown paper-covered guidebooks that lay beside her coffee tray. The Munns always went ashore provided with books, maps, and folders telling them what to expect at every port of call. They differed in every imaginable manner from Emma and her mother, who seldom fully understood where they were and who were often daunted and upset (particularly Mrs. Ellenger) if the people they encountered ashore were the wrong color or spoke an unfamiliar language.

“You should wear a thick scarf,” Mrs. Munn went on, “and warm stockings.” Thinking of the Ellengers' usual wardrobe, she paused, discouraged. “The most important parts of the—” But she stopped again, unable to say “body” before a girl of twelve. “One should keep the throat and the ankles warm,” she said, lowering her gaze to her book.

“We can't,” Emma said respectfully. “We didn't bring anything for the cruise except summer dresses. My mother thought it would be warm all the time.”

“She should have inquired,” Miss Munn said. Miss Munn was crisper, taut; often the roles seemed reversed, and it appeared that she, of the two, should have been the mother.

“I guess she didn't think,” Emma said, cast down by all the things her mother failed to do. Emma loved the Munns. It was distressing when, as now, they failed to approve of her. They were totally unlike the people she was accustomed to, with their tweeds, their pearls, their strings of fur that bore the claws and muzzles of some small, flattened beast. She had fallen in love with them the first night aboard, during the first dinner out. The Munns and the Ellengers had been seated together, the dining-room steward having thought it a good plan to group, at a table for four, two solitary women and their solitary daughters.

The Munns had been so kind, so interested, asking any number of friendly questions. They wondered how old Emma was, and where Mr. Ellenger might be (“In Heaven,” said Emma, casual), and where the Ellengers lived in New York.

“We live all over the place.” Emma spoke up proudly. It was evident to her that her mother wasn't planning to say a word.
Somebody
had to be polite. “Most of the time we live in hotels. But last summer we didn't. We lived in an apartment. A big apartment. It wasn't our place. It belongs to this friend of my mother's, Mr. Jimmy Salter, but he was going to be away, and the rent was paid anyway, and we were living there already, so he said—he said—” She saw her mother's face and stopped, bewildered.

“That was nice,” said Mrs. Munn, coloring. Her daughter looked down, smiling mysteriously.

Emma's mother said nothing. She lit a cigarette and blew the smoke over the table. She wore a ring, a wedding band, a Mexican necklace, and a number of clashing bracelets. Her hair, which was long and lighter even than Emma's, had been carefully arranged, drawn into a tight chignon and circled with flowers. Clearly it was not for Miss or Mrs. Munn that she had taken such pains; she had expected a different table arrangement, one that included a man. Infinitely obliging, Mrs. Munn wished that one of them were a man. She bit her lip, trying to find a way out of this unexpected social thicket. Turning to Emma, she said, a little wildly, “Do you like school? I mean I see you are not in school. Have you been ill?”