Up a Road Slowly (13 page)

There was very little that either Aunt Cordelia or I could do for the Eltwings; sometimes my aunt prepared little Sunday night suppers for them—strange supper parties in which Aunt Cordelia did not dare approach Katy Eltwing, but would sit talking to Jonathan when the meal was finished while Uncle Haskell took Mrs. Eltwing for a walk, or sat at the piano playing for her and singing the songs she loved. Often she would fall asleep against his shoulder and he would lift her in his arms, carrying her to the couch in the library, where her husband would cover her carefully and sit close beside her. It was like a strange, unreal play. Sometimes I was happy to escape to the Trevorts and taste the air of reality again with Danny and his kindly, very normal parents.

As the months passed, we watched Katy Eltwing become feebler, farther and farther removed from everything about her. It was very hard to persuade her to eat enough for the maintenance of her strength. Aunt Cordelia used to cook every nourishing delicacy she could remember and send me over with covered bowls of food that might tempt Mrs. Eltwing's appetite. Jonathan used to coax his wife to eat whatever I brought over, but after a few spoonfuls, she would turn wearily away, shaking her head.

“She used to enjoy food so much,” Jonathan Eltwing told me on one such occasion when we had tried to tempt her into eating. “She enjoyed all good things—good food, beautiful objects, beautiful people. She had a great fondness for gold; every piece of jewelry she selected was of gold. I used to think that the metal pins and necklaces she bought were too heavy for her, but they were what she wanted. And velvet for her dresses—soft velvets and gold. How she loved that combination.”

I thought of Uncle Haskell's bright hair and the dark velvet of his smoking jacket on that autumn afternoon when she first saw him. Soft velvet and gold; that combination and with it high praise for the turbulent music that obviously had shaken her as she played it.

As she became weaker, she no longer cared for the songs that previously had given her pleasure. For weeks she lay in her bed, silent and uncomprehending. Uncle Haskell and I went to see her almost daily; then one evening he turned to Jonathan Eltwing as if he had come to a sudden decision. “I can do nothing for her, Jonathan; I will not come here again.”

“It is possible that she recognizes you, Haskell,” Jonathan began.

Uncle Haskell almost plunged from the room. “No, she doesn't, I'm sure of that. If I could help her, I would, but it's no use. Surely you understand, Jonathan. I have my work—there are many pressures upon me . . .”

It was the first time he had resorted to his lies in connection with anything that had to do with Katy Eltwing.

She died one bright summer morning. When I told Uncle Haskell about it, he turned his head and had nothing to say. He did not go to her funeral.

According to Mrs. Peters there was an old cliché among the men of the neighborhood, the gist of which was the fact that they had never known Haskell Bishop when he wasn't drinking, but neither had they ever known him when he was drunk. He was drunk, however, the day Katy Eltwing was buried, sadly and pathetically drunk. He never spoke of that day afterward, nor did he ever again mention the little woman who had loved him—or who had loved something he represented.

 

 

 

C
arlotta thought that I was completely bereft of my senses when I chose to live with Aunt Cordelia during my high school years.

“You won't have any dates, Julie; you simply won't. How many high school boys will have a car to drive out into the country, or how many of them—unless you date upperclassmen—are going to be old enough to drive? And anyway, Julie, how many boys are going to want to face Miss Cordelia if they should bring you home five minutes late some night?”

Carlotta was taking a room in town; when she heard that I was staying with Aunt Cordelia, she tried to rent my old room at home, but Father and Alicia would have none of it. “That room is Julie's whenever she wishes to stay in town,” they said, and so Carlotta found an even more desirable place with a young couple, neither of whom paid the slightest attention to the whereabouts of their pretty tenant.

For two years while Carlotta sailed from one boy to another, attended every dance and football game, and shook her head pityingly at me as she realized the fulfillment of her prophesies, I might still have been twelve years old and a student in the old one-room rural school, for all the social life I had. Occasionally Father invited me to a college affair and introduced me to some of the young men in his classes; but young college men were interested in young college women for the most part, and their attentions to me were more or less in the line of duty. And Carlotta had been right about the high school boys: they dated the girls who lived in town. The girls who lived in town constituted an “in-group”; if you lived five miles out in the country and were looked after by an austere aunt—well, you simply were not considered eligible for the “in-group.”

I was not too unhappy during those first two years. Danny or Jim Ferris saw to it that I got into town for the football games; Alicia insisted that I try out for dramatics and I had parts in a couple of school plays; there were occasional weekends with Father and Alicia during which I had sophisticated experiences that many of the “in-group” girls might have envied. My existence was hardly that of a recluse.

There were, however, many times when I felt lonely, when I had the aching feeling that life was passing by me and that I was missing something very desirable. Sometimes I leaned on the sill of my window and looked out at the night with a longing that I was not able to define, but one which was responsible for many a sigh and even a few tears.

And then suddenly, there was Brett Kingsman. Suddenly there was a new chapter of my life opening before me. It seemed very beautiful and marvelous, but there were tensions and anxieties arising as suddenly as love had arisen, and I felt bewildered as I tried to face them.

It was Alicia who sharpened those tensions and anxieties for me. She did it indirectly, of course, and without malice. Actually, she set things in motion through an assignment given to her third-hour English class where I sat beside the handsome transfer student who had created a sizable furor among the girls, “in-group” as well as outsiders.

My stepmother came to her classes each day beautifully groomed, poised, alert, and with a sweet-sour quality to her comments that made them palatable in spite of an occasional sting. I was quite proud of her, really, although for a long time the memory of Laura's room and of my lonely, bewildered feeling that morning in the breakfast nook tinged my feeling for her ever so slightly. But I couldn't deny the fact that she was a charming person and an exceptionally fine teacher. There was no loafing in Mrs. Trelling's classes; we had to dig ideas out of our own minds instead of reference books; we were treated to no pablum feedings of “true-false” or “fill-in-the-blank” tests. And our themes were not devoted to accounts of a vacation trip or a résumé of
Silas Marner
. Alicia liked originality and independence of thinking; sometimes, however, she had considerable difficulty in discovering either among the adolescents who sat before her.

I remember how fresh and radiant she looked that morning, her blue eyes cool and smiling under her smooth black brows. It occurred to me that my father's wife was still very happy after almost three years, and I envied her a little. I kept telling myself that I was happy, but I wasn't. There was too much anxiety, too many half-hidden uncertainties in my feeling for Brett Kingsman. I had no wish to be as old as Alicia—her forty-odd years seemed quite appalling to me—but I wished for her confidence, her air of what I had recently learned to call
savoir faire
. Uncle Haskell had this quality too, but there was a difference; with Alicia, it was genuine.

I was thinking of these things when I suddenly became aware of her assignment.

“I assume that each of you has read Thoreau's
Civil Disobedience
since it is on the list of required readings—if not, perhaps this assignment will provide motivation for doing so over the weekend.” Alicia leaned her elbows on the desk, lacing her slender fingers together and smiling in a way that took the edge off her words. “For next week's assignment I'd like you to write a paper on
Civil Disobedience
, explaining Thoreau's justification of his position and your own reactions to that position.” Alicia paid no attention to a slight moan that swept heavenward from the class, and continued serenely. “I will throw out a few points that you might think about in organizing your paper: for example, remembering that
Civil Disobedience
was written in angry protest against the Fugitive Slave Law and the prospect of war with Mexico, what do you think Thoreau's reaction would have been to the secession of the southern states a few years later? And in our own century, how would he have stood with those who violated the 18th amendment? Incidentally, how do you think he would have felt about Federal Aid to Education?”

It was plain that Alicia was enjoying herself. “You may wish to explore the growth of Gandhi's passive resistance struggle in India and its relation to Thoreau's theory. Or again, you might like to discuss in terms of Thoreau's convictions, such a statement as I have placed on the board.” She pointed to a sentence which most of us had read idly when we entered the room: “The goal of counseling is to help the individual adjust to his environment.”

I commenced jotting down a few notes hurriedly; it was not going to be an easy paper, but I felt a bit of excitement growing in me as I thought of some possibilities for discussion. It was while I was writing that Brett slammed a book down on the arm of his chair, sent a couple pencils rattling to the floor and then leaned back, glaring at Alicia.

She was as smooth as ice cream. “You will have a week to complete your paper. I'd like it typed, please, double-spaced. If any one of you wishes to talk with me about the assignment, you may make an appointment with me during one of my office hours.” She flipped a few cards through her fingers as the bell rang, studied the notations briefly and then added, “I should like to see Jim Ferris for a short time at eleven; Norma Grayson at four this afternoon; Julie Trelling at four-fifteen. That is all. You are dismissed.”

Out in the corridor Brett got rid of his rage, employing me as a sounding board. “Lord, how I hate schoolteachers,” he railed, “how I hate 'em in general and your highbrow stepmama in particular. What did your old man mean, I wonder, getting himself tied up to that she-encyclopaedia.” He turned toward me savagely. “She's out to get me, Julie; she's going to see to it that I flunk English again.”

And I, who in former years would have had a biting answer for this sort of attitude, was soft as a mound of mashed potatoes. “I'll help you, Brett; I'm not going to see you flunk, darling.”

He pressed my arm a little at that. “I wonder what the old girl wants to see you about, honey?”

I had been wondering about the same thing. “I don't know, Brett; maybe something about my schedule for next year.” I could hardly tear myself away at the door of my next class. “Will you meet me outside her office about four-thirty?” I asked.

“I don't know, Julie, baby; I will if I can. Anyway, I'll give you a ring sometime this evening.” He slipped his arm around me for a second, and Danny Trevort, who was coming down the hall toward us, gave me a disgusted look. “How are you, Julie,
baby
?” he hissed, as we walked into class together.

How Danny knew it, I don't know, for I had never discussed it with him, but it was true that Brett's pet names for me sometimes sent a shiver of distaste down my spine. I had lived with Aunt Cordelia too long to enjoy being called “Julie, baby” or “Honeybun” or “Sugar.” They were foolish in the first place and rather revoltingly sticky for someone who was strictly a high protein girl. Still, it was Brett who gave me those names and Brett was the boy whom I called “my beloved” in the secrecy of my own dreams. When one loves, one must learn to adjust, to be understanding, I thought.

There had been moments when I very nearly forgot that bit of wisdom; moments like the ones when we sat together in the darkened theater over at the college and watched a famous pair of actors in
Macbeth
. I remember sitting tense as the door to King Duncan's bedroom opened and Lady Macbeth came out leaning against the wall for support, looking in horror at her blood-drenched hands. I pressed Brett's arm in my excitement, but he did not share my mood. He yawned overtly and leaned his cheek down to mine. “Are you bored too, honey?” he asked hopefully.

I felt strongly out of tune with Brett that night after the play, and he noticed it.

“The whole thing was a lot of hogwash as far as I'm concerned,” he said belligerently as we left the theater.

“It has done pretty well for the past three centuries in spite of your opinion,” I said sharply, the Aunt Cordelia influence getting the upper hand of me.

Brett dropped my hand abruptly. “Well, you can have it, schoolmarm,” he said, and the contempt in his voice was unmistakable.

Our romance trembled in the air for a while that evening, but it soon became steady again, for I was not long in feeling contritely apologetic for my sharpness, and Brett, who was in immediate need of help with an English assignment, was sweetly forgiving. We reassured one another of our love, and I told myself that I must expect to make adjustments to Brett's tastes. Wasn't that what love was all about—a mutual understanding, a give-and-take relationship? I didn't like it when a small thought intruded itself, suggesting that so far, our understanding was hardly mutual, and that up to the present, I was doing all the giving and Brett was doing the taking.