Come Along with Me (18 page)

Or, see, the trolley coming. It swayed dangerously from side to side; was it going to fall sideways, its steel and glass construction bending out of shape against the ground; that whole heavy weight would have to be moved before they could rescue anyone trapped beneath it, and people tomorrow might tell one another, “Lucky there was only this one woman going down the street—suppose there had been a crowd? They say she screamed for half an hour before . . .” Unidentified explosions had happened before, many times. People went quietly down a street, on their way to dinner, not expecting anything except possibly being late, and suddenly—it might be a gas stove left on, or just one of those incredible coincidences, of air and pressure and a harmless household preparation left uncovered, and of course the manufacturers could disclaim responsibility and deplore the tragedy—and the world buckled top and bottom, there was only a convulsive, brain-splitting terror, and there was the restaurant ahead, and there was no other way to go except on and inside, hesitating only for a moment before the heavy doors which could so easily slip their hinges and instead of swinging docilely, fall flatly and with full weight . . .

Don was there, waving tentatively from across the room. Suddenly the world fell into place outside, and she waved back; he was so wonderfully safe and familiar in the worn gray suit she had seen as many times as he had seen the red dress she was wearing; she waved and smiled and thought, I have been alone for so long.

[
1952
]

PAJAMA PARTY

It was planned by Jannie herself. I was won over reluctantly, by much teasing and promises of supernatural good behavior; as a matter of fact Jannie even went so far as to say that if she could have a pajama party she would keep her room picked up for one solid month, a promise so far beyond the realms of possibility that I could only believe that she wanted the pajama party more than anything else in the world. My husband thought it was a mistake. “You are making a terrible, an awful mistake,” he said to me. “And don't try to say I didn't tell you so.” My older son Laurie told me it was a mistake. “Man,” he said, “
this
you will regret. For the rest of your life you will be saying to yourself ‘Why did I let that dopey girl ever
ever
have a pajama party that night?' For the rest of your life. When you're an old lady you will be saying—”

“What can I do?” I said. “I promised.” We were all at the breakfast table, and it was seven-thirty on the morning of Jannie's eleventh birthday. Jannie sat unhearing, her spoon poised blissfully over her cereal, her eyes dreamy with speculation over what was going to turn up in the packages to be presented that evening after dinner. Her list of wanted birthday presents had included a live pony, a pair of roller skates, high-heeled shoes of her very own, a make-up kit with real lipstick, a record player and records, and a dear little monkey to play with, and any or all of these things might be in the offing. She sighed, and set down her spoon, and sighed.

“You know of course,” Laurie said to me, “I have the room right next to her? I'm going to be sleeping in there like I do every night? You know I'm going to be in my bed trying to sleep?” He shuddered. “Giggle,” he said. “Giggle, giggle, giggle, giggle, giggle, giggle. Two, three o'clock in the morning—giggle giggle giggle. A human being can't bear it.”

Jannie focused her eyes on him. “Why don't we burn up this boy's birth certificate?” she asked.

“Giggle, giggle,” Laurie said.

Barry spoke, waving his toast. “When Jannie gets her birthday presents can I play with it?” he asked. “If I am very very careful can I please play with just the—”

Everyone began to talk at once to drown him out. “Giggle, giggle,” Laurie shouted. “Don't say I didn't warn you,” my husband said loudly. “Anyway I promised,” I said. “Happy birthday dear sister,” Sally sang. Jannie giggled.

“There,” Laurie said. “You hear her? All night long—five of them.” Shaking his head as one who has been telling them and telling them and
telling
them not to bring that wooden horse through the gates of Troy, he stamped off to get his schoolbooks and his trumpet. Jannie sighed happily. Barry opened his mouth to speak and his father and Sally and I all said “Shhh.”

Jannie had to be excused from her cereal, because she was too excited to eat. It was a cold frosty morning, and I forced the girls into their winter coats and warm hats, and put Barry into his snow suit. Laurie, who believes that he is impervious to cold, came downstairs, said, “Mad, I tell you, mad,” sympathetically to me, “ 'By, cat,” to his father, and went out the back door toward his bike, ignoring my frantic insistence that he put on some kind of a jacket or at least a sweater.

I checked that teeth had been brushed, hair combed, handkerchiefs secured, told the girls to hold Barry's hand crossing the street, told Barry to hold the girls' hands crossing the street, put Barry's mid-morning cookies into his jacket pocket, reminded Jannie for the third time about her spelling book, held the dogs so they could not get out when the door was opened, told everyone good-by and happy birthday again to Jannie, and watched from the kitchen window while they made their haphazard way down the driveway, lingering, chatting, stopping to point to things. I opened the door once more to call to them to move along, they would be late for school, and they disregarded me. I called to hurry
up
, and for a minute they moved more quickly, hopping, and then came to the end of the driveway and onto the sidewalk where they merged at once into the general traffic going to school, the collection of red hoods and blue jackets and plaid caps that goes past every morning and comes past again at noontime and goes back after lunch and returns at last, lingering, at three o'clock. I came back to the table and sat down wearily, reaching for the coffeepot. “Five of them are too many,” my husband explained. “One would have been quite enough.”

“You can't have a pajama party with just one guest,” I said sullenly. “And anyway no matter who she invited the other three would have been offended.”

By lunchtime I had set up four cots, two of them borrowed from a neighbor who was flatly taken aback when she heard what I wanted them for. “I think you must be crazy,” she said. Jannie's bedroom is actually two rooms, one small and one, which she calls her library because her bookcase is in there, much larger. I put one cot in her bedroom next to her bed, which left almost no room in there to move around. The other three cots I lined up in her library, making a kind of dormitory effect. Beyond Jannie's library is the guest room, and all the bedrooms except Laurie's are on the other side of the guest room. Laurie's room is separated by only the thinnest wall from Jannie's library. I used all my colored sheets and flowered pillowcases to make up the five beds, and every extra blanket in the house; I finally had to use the pillows from the couch.

When Jannie came home from school I made her lie down and rest, pointing out in one of the most poignant understatements of my life that she would probably be up late that night. In fifteen minutes she was downstairs asking if she could get dressed for her party. I said her party was not going to start until eight o'clock and to take an apple and go lie down again. In another ten minutes she was down to explain that she would probably be too excited to dress later and it would really be only common sense to put her party dress on now. I said if she came downstairs again before dinner was on the table I would personally call her four guests and cancel the pajama party. She finally rested for half an hour or so in the chair by the upstairs phone, talking to her friend Carole.

She was of course unable to eat her dinner, although she had chosen the menu. She nibbled at a piece of lamb, rearranged her mashed potatoes, and told her father and me that she could not understand how we had endured as many birthdays as we had. Her father said that he personally had gotten kind of used to them, and that as a matter of fact a certain quality of excitement did seem to go out of them after—say—thirty, and Jannie sighed unbelievingly.

“One more birthday like this would
kill
her,” Laurie said. He groaned. “Carole,” he said, as one telling over a fearful list, “Kate. Laura. Linda, Jannie. You must be
crazy
,” he said to me.

“I suppose your friends are so much?” Jannie said. “I suppose Ernie didn't get sent down to Miss Corcoran's office six times today for throwing paper wads? I suppose Charlie—”

“You didn't seem to think Charlie was so bad, walking home from school,” Laurie said. “I guess that wasn't
you
walking with—”

Jannie turned pink. “Does my own brother have any right to insult me on my own birthday?” she asked her father.

In honor of Jannie's birthday Sally helped me clear the table, and Jannie sat in state with her hands folded, waiting. When the table was cleared we left Jannie there alone, and assembled in the study. While my husband lighted the candles on the pink-and-white cake, Sally and Barry took from the back of the closet the gifts they had chosen themselves and lovingly wrapped. Barry's gift was clearly a leathercraft set, since his most careful wrapping had been unable to make the paper go right round the box, and the name showed clearly. Sally had three books. Laurie had an album of records he had chosen himself. (“This is for my
sister
,” he had told the clerk in the music store, most earnestly, with an Elvis Presley record in each hand, “for my sister—not me, my
sister.
”) Laurie also had to carry the little blue record player which my husband and I had decided was a more suitable gift for our elder daughter than a dear little monkey or even a pair of high-heeled shoes. I carried the boxes from the two sets of grandparents, one holding a flowered quilted skirt and a fancy blouse, and the other holding a stiff crinoline petticoat. With the cake leading, we filed into the dining room where Jannie sat. “Happy birthday to you,” we sang, and Jannie looked once and then leaped past us to the phone. “Be there in a minute,” she said, and then, “Carole? Carole, listen, I
got
it, the record player. 'By.”

By a quarter to eight Jannie was dressed in the new blouse and skirt, over the petticoat, Barry was happily taking apart the leathercraft set, the record player had been plugged in and we had heard, more or less involuntarily, four sides of Elvis Presley. Laurie had shut himself in his room, dissociating himself utterly from the festivities. “I was willing to
buy
them,” he explained, “I even spent good money out of the bank, but no one can make me
listen
.”

I took a card table up to Jannie's room and squeezed it in among the beds; on it I put a pretty cloth and a bowl of apples, a small dish of candy, a plate of decorated cupcakes, and an ice bucket in which were five bottles of grape soda imbedded in ice. Jannie brought her record player upstairs and put it on the table and Laurie plugged it in for her on condition that she would not turn it on until he was safely back in his room. With what Laurie felt indignantly was an absolute and complete disregard for the peace of mind and healthy sleep of a cherished older son I put a deck of fortunetelling cards on the table, and a book on the meaning of dreams.

Everything was ready, and Jannie and her father and I were sitting apprehensively in the living room when the first guest came. It was Laura. She was dressed in a blue party dress, and she brought Jannie a charm bracelet which Jannie put on. Then Carole and Linda arrived together, one wearing a green party dress and the other a fancy blouse and skirt, like Jannie. They all admired Jannie's new blouse and skirt, and one of them had brought her a book and the other had brought a dress and hat for her doll. Kate came almost immediately afterward. She was wearing a wide skirt like Jannie's, and she had a crinoline, too. She and Jannie compared crinolines, and each of them insisted that the other's was much,
much
prettier. Kate had brought Jannie a pocketbook with a penny inside for luck. All the girls carried overnight bags but Kate, who had a small suitcase. “You'll think I'm going to stay for a
month
, the stuff I brought,” she said, and I felt my husband shudder.

Each of the girls complimented, individually, each item of apparel on each of the others. It was conceded that Jannie's skirt, which came from California, was of a much more advanced style than skirts obtainable in Vermont. The pocketbook was a most fortunate choice, they agreed, because it perfectly matched the little red flowers in Jannie's skirt. Laura's shoes were the prettiest anyone had
ever
seen. Linda's party dress was of orlon, which all of them simply
adored
. Linda said if she
did
say it herself, the ruffles never got limp. Carole was wearing a necklace which no one could
possibly
tell was not made of real pearls. Linda said that we had the
nicest
house, she was always telling her mother and father that she wished they had one just like it. My husband said we would sell any time. Kate said our dogs were just
darling
, and Laura said she
loved
that green chair. I said somewhat ungraciously that they had all of them spent a matter of thousands of hours in our house and the green chair was no newer or prettier than it had been the last time Laura was here, when she was bouncing up and down on the seat. Jannie said hastily that there were cupcakes and Elvis Presley records up in her room, and they were gone. They went up the back stairs like a troop of horses, saying “Cupcakes, cupcakes.”

Sally and Barry were in bed, but permitted to stay awake because it was Friday night and Jannie's birthday. Barry had taken Jannie's leathercraft set up to his room, planning to make his dear sister a pair of moccasins. Because Sally and Barry were not invited to the party I took them each a tray with one cupcake, a glass of fruit juice, and three candies. Sally asked if she could play
her
phonograph while she read fairy tales and ate her cupcake and I said certainly, since in the general air of excitement prevailing I did not think that even Barry would fall asleep for a while yet. As I started downstairs Barry called after me to ask if
he
could play
his
phonograph and of course I could hardly say no.

When I got downstairs my husband had settled down to reading freshman themes in the living room. “Everything seems . . .” he said; I believe he was going to finish “quiet,” but Elvis Presley started then from Jannie's room. There was a howl of fury from Laurie's room, and then
his
phonograph started; to answer Elvis Presley he had chosen an old Louis Armstrong record, and he was holding his own. From the front of the house upstairs drifted down the opening announcement of “Peter and the Wolf,” from Sally, and then, distantly, from Barry's room the crashing chords which heralded (blast off!) “Space Men on the Moon.”

“What did you say?” I asked my husband.

“Oh, when the saints, come marching in . . .”

“I said it seemed quiet,” my husband yelled.

“The cat, by a clarinet in a loooow register . . .”

“I want you, I need you . . .”

“Prepare for blast: five—four—three—two—”

“I want to be in their number . . .”

“It sure does,” I yelled back.