Just an Ordinary Day: The Uncollected Stories of Shirley Jackson (22 page)

He sat down at his desk and pressed his hand to his forehead irritably. It had to be done, however, and he took a sheet of her monogrammed notepaper and opened his fountain pen. “Dearest Mommy,” he wrote, “my mean old finger is still too painful to write with—James says he thinks I may have sprained it, but I think he is just tired of taking dictation from me—as if he had ever done anything else; anyway, we’re both just
sick
that we can’t join you in Paris after all, but I really think we’re wiser not to. After all, we only came back from our honeymoon in July, and James just
has
to spend
some
time at his old office. He says maybe this winter we can fly down to South America for a couple of weeks, and not let anyone know where we’re going or when we’re coming back or anything. Anyway, have a lovely time in Paris, and buy
lots
of lovely clothes, and
don’t
forget to write me.” Mr. Benjamin sat and regarded his letter and then, sighing, took up his pen and added, “Love, Helen and James.” He sealed and addressed the letter and then, sitting quietly at his desk with his hands folded in front of him, he spent a moment thinking. He reached a sudden decision and opened the bottom drawer of the desk and took out a box of rather cheap notepaper, faintly colored, and a fountain pen filled with brown ink. With a sober air which made his gesture somehow ominous, he took the pen into his left hand and began to write in a bold hand, “My dearest, I have finally thought of a way to get around the jealous old fool. I’ve spoken to the girl a couple of times at the library and I think she’ll help us if she’s sure she won’t get into trouble. Here’s what I want to do…”

D
EVIL OF A
T
ALE

A
ND THE DEVIL SAT
in the lonely silences of hell, lost in thought. There had been upon Earth a man, son of God, and he had put the devil to rout. And the world worshipped God’s son, and through him God, and the devil sat alone.

“I will have a son,” the devil said. “There will be a woman who will bear me a son.”

And, taking himself to Earth, he sought out one Lady Katharine, wise and witty, mother of no children, but wife to a weak man. And the devil, speaking with Lady Katharine, put her his problem, and offered her the mothering of his son.

But Lady Katharine was wiser than that. “What assurance will I have,” she said to the devil, “that you will reward me suitably?”

“You have my word, madam,” said the devil courteously.

But Lady Katharine laughed, and said to the devil: “I will bear your son, and then you will forget your word and carry me off to hell. I will require adequate security.”

“I will give you a throne in hell,” the devil promised.

“I will take a throne on Earth,” Lady Katharine replied.

“I will give you all you ask of me,” said the devil, “and you will have my son as hostage.”

“You will care for your son well enough without me,” said Lady Katharine. “I will take your right eye as hostage.”

So a bargain was struck, and the devil gave Lady Katharine his right eye as security for his bargain. And Lady Katharine bore a son to the devil, and kept the devil’s eye in the form of a ruby in a box with a cross on the lid. And during her lifetime she possessed the wealth of the world, and all its joys, and she lived many long and pleasant years with the devil’s right eye as hostage for her soul. And the devil’s son grew and flourished under his father’s watchful care, and he was the only son of Lady Katharine’s life, and upon her death he would assume the wealth she had taken from the devil.

And Lady Katharine died, and the devil took her soul, and demanded his eye for her soul’s freedom.

But the devil’s son was possessed of all Lady Katharine’s wealth, and the box with the cross as well, and having not his father’s dread of the cross, he opened the box and found therein the ruby that was the devil’s eye, and with it a note saying that it was Lady Katharine’s wish that it be thrown into the sea to redeem her soul from hell.

But the devil’s son, being his father’s heir, laughed and closed the box upon the ruby. And the devil, wanting his eye, came to his son, and disclosed himself, and said: “I am your father, and I have protected and guided you all your life. You have my eye, and the redemption of your mother’s soul; throw the box into the sea and free yourself from my anger.”

But the devil’s son, knowing his father well, said: “I am your only son, and you are not likely to have another; I will keep your eye as guarantee of your continued favors to me, and you dare not harm me; as for my mother’s soul, let it lie in hell.”

And he turned his back on the devil and went out into the world.

T
HE
M
OUSE

T
HE NEW APARTMENT INTO
which Mrs. and Mr. Malkin moved on the first of October was large and comfortable. It had a woodburning fireplace, and a big kitchen, and was near Mr. Malkin’s office; Mrs. Malkin had had the living room painted a soft rose, and the bedroom an equally soft blue, and the kitchen green, and then, in a sudden burst of what Mr. Malkin might have thought was wifely humor, she had taken the room Mr. Malkin had felt immediately was to be his study and had had it painted gray, a heavy slate gray. Mr. Malkin worked for an insurance company and had read somewhere that light, cheerful colors were best for work—Mr. Malkin’s minor executive’s office at the company had tan plaster walls and straight chairs—but Mrs. Malkin had been firm. “You’re such a gloomy type anyway,” she had said unkindly. She had relented to the extent of orange drapes and a bright rug, but Mr. Malkin never did like working in the room. Sundays, when Mrs. Malkin was moving cheerfully about in the kitchen, Mr. Malkin sat in his gray and orange room and pretended he was working, but at the end of the year, when he proposed repainting it, Mr. Malkin was to bring up as an unanswerable argument the fact that he felt he never had done any work in that room. And Mrs. Malkin was going to say that he never did any work anywhere anyway.

Mrs. Malkin had felt privately for a long time that it was her duty to see that her husband wasn’t always as boyish as he intended to be; she had squashed with some enthusiasm his attempts to take up golf, had discouraged his friendship with an older member of the firm whom she thought patronizing, and had seen to it that at twenty-nine Mr. Malkin was always correctly dressed, good-mannered, childless, and taciturn.

Mr. Malkin liked his wife, or did until the terrible incident of the mouse.

The mice, both of them, had come with the apartment. The minute Mrs. Malkin had gone into the new kitchen and found the mousetrap the old tenant had left in the back of a cupboard, she had known she was going to have trouble. “They’ve been using this mousetrap right along,” she told Mr. Malkin, “and you can see it hasn’t done any good. Prints all over the kitchen.”

“Trouble with this trap,” said Mr. Malkin, getting down on his knees beside it, “they used the same trap over and over. Mice smell where traps have caught other mice, won’t go near a trap that’s been used.”

Mrs. Malkin regarded her husband. “What makes you think you know anything about mice?” she asked.

“You get me a new trap,” Mr. Malkin said, “and I’ll have your mice caught for you.”

Mrs. Malkin didn’t remember to get a new trap until after the painters were finished and Mr. Malkin had put up the drapes and the pictures and she had had her new lampshades made and set them up. Then one night when she went out into her freshly painted kitchen to get a pack of cigarettes, Mrs. Malkin put her foot down on the mouse, which was racing for cover under the refrigerator. She screamed and ran into the living room, where Mr. Malkin was sitting and reading.

“I didn’t know you were afraid of mice,” Mr. Malkin said soothingly.

“I’m not,” Mrs. Malkin said, “except I do hate to have one of them scare me like that.”

“You get a trap in the morning,” Mr. Malkin said, “and I’ll have that mouse by night.”

Mrs. Malkin got a trap the next morning, Mr. Malkin set it that night, and the mouse was caught, but just as Mr. Malkin was telling Mrs. Malkin, “You see, trouble with that old trap was that the mouse smelled where other mice had been caught,” Mrs. Malkin heard a suspicious rustling in the newspapers behind the stove, and the next morning there were mouse tracks all over the sink.

“I’m going to have to get the exterminator,” Mrs. Malkin said to Mr. Malkin over the breakfast table, “this cannot go on. I’m not afraid of mice—you know that—but they’re making me so nervous.”

“No one needs an exterminator for a couple of mice,” Mr. Malkin said. “You just get me a trap today…”

Mrs. Malkin nodded, helped her husband with his overcoat, and kissed him goodbye. “You get that trap,” Mr. Malkin said as he went down the stairs, “and I’ll see that your mouse is caught by night.”

Later that morning Mrs. Malkin called her husband at the office. “You get me a trap?” Mr. Malkin asked right away.

“A trap?” Mrs. Malkin repeated vaguely.

Mr. Malkin thought he detected a strangeness in his wife’s voice. “Is there something wrong?” he asked.

There was a brief silence. Then: “What I called you about,” Mrs. Malkin said, “I was glancing through your desk.”

Mr. Malkin thought swiftly. He had obviously done something wrong; however, at the moment, he could remember nothing in his desk that would offend his wife. “I keep a lot of junk—” he began.

“I know,” Mrs. Malkin said, “there’s a little bankbook.”

“A bankbook?” Mr. Malkin said.

“It’s made out to the name of—let me see.” There was a pause while Mrs. Malkin looked at the bankbook. “Donald Emmett Malkin,” she said.

“Donald Emmett Malkin,” Mr. Malkin said.

“There’s a balance of twenty-nine dollars,” Mrs. Malkin said, “a dollar a week for about six months.”

“Twenty-nine dollars,” Mr. Malkin said. “Well.”

“You’d better see if you can get that money back,” Mrs. Malkin said. “After all, it’s almost thirty dollars.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Malkin. “I had forgotten about it. I’ll get the money back.”

“Who’s Donald Emmett Malkin?” Mrs. Malkin said.

“Just a name,” Mr. Malkin said vaguely. “A joke I had at the time.”

“Donald for your father, Emmett for my father,” Mrs. Malkin said. “You say you’ll get that money back? Shall I leave the book out for you?”

“Yes,” Mr. Malkin said. “It was probably just a joke.”

“Probably,” Mrs. Malkin said. “I saw the mouse, by the way.”

“Frighten you?” Mr. Malkin said.

“I hate mice,” Mrs. Malkin said, “it was all fat and funny. Well, I’ll throw this little book out then, if you’re sure you won’t want it.”

“Sure,” Mr. Malkin said. He hung up with some relief.

When he got home that night, Mrs. Malkin met him at the door. She was wearing her wine-colored housecoat and had her hair sleek and straight down her back.

“I got the mouse,” Mrs. Malkin said.

“In the trap?”

“No,” Mrs. Malkin said gently, “just the mouse. I was too quick for her.”

“For her?” Mr. Malkin was saying as he followed his wife into his study. The mouse lay in the center of the floor, on a piece of white typing paper. The mouse was, too, just the color of the walls. “For her?” Mr. Malkin said with more strength.

“I hit her with the frying pan,” Mrs. Malkin said. She looked at her husband. “I was very brave,” she said.

“You certainly were,” Mr. Malkin said heartily.

“Then I put her on the piece of paper with the broom,” Mrs. Malkin said, “and brought her in here. And I know why she was so fat.”

Mr. Malkin bent over the mouse and saw why she was so fat, and then he looked up at his wife. From the look on her face, Mr. Malkin realized that she was the most terrible woman he had ever seen.

M
Y
G
RANDMOTHER AND THE
W
ORLD OF
C
ATS

S
INCE MY GRANDMOTHER IS
patient, and cats are long-lived, I am not giving any sort of decent odds on the ultimate outcome of their feud; although my money is privately on my grandmother, there is a lot of big dough coming from somewhere on the cats, and I am not one to give anyone a tip on a losing proposition. I can, however, give a brief résumé of the situation up to now, as a constant observer, and I’d like to add that, taking the long view, I have never thought that the cats had the staying power to match up with the old lady. Nine lives, maybe, but not the staying power.

My grandmother is a charming, gentle woman, except for what she does to cats. She is partial to them, too, and grieves constantly over the cruel chance that has chosen her as their natural enemy. She seems to appall them. Since she came to live with us, when my grandfather died, about fifteen years ago, there have been no fewer than forty or fifty cats that have bided their little hour with us, developed their personality scars, and gone. Perhaps it is just that we have gotten used to my grandmother, and it’s too much to ask of a cat.

I remember Flossie, who used to bite my grandmother. Nothing more. Just walk up to my grandmother peacefully, get a firm grip on her ankles, and hang on. For a while my grandmother thought it was just affection, and was tremendously pleased at being singled out for Flossie’s friendship, but then, as Flossie grew older and bigger and her teeth got longer, my grandmother developed a tendency to sit with her feet tucked under her. Finally Flossie began to have kittens, thousands of them, and one day my grandmother was sitting resting her legs by putting them on the floor and Flossie, who my grandmother had thought was safely out of the room, came from under a table with one of her oldest kittens and began to teach him how to bite my grandmother’s ankles. Since it is one of her cardinal principles never to have a cat killed, and never to dismiss one for any but a very adequate reason, my grandmother, who of course had no sort of proof against Flossie, went on sitting with her feet underneath her. However, Flossie finally made her mistake, and one day, in a fine jovial spirit, came running into a room and, mistaking my father for my grandmother, took a sizable piece out of his shin.

After Flossie was gone, my grandmother began to have trouble with the one kitten we had kept, a yellow half-Persian named Creampuff. Creampuff’s approach tended more toward the psychological breakdown. He would leave the room pointedly whenever my grandmother entered, glancing over his shoulder with his lip curled as he left. If Creampuff was quietly eating in the kitchen and my grandmother came in, Creampuff would stop eating and walk out. When this had no effect except to make my grandmother lose a little weight, Creampuff began to kill flies and leave them around. Whenever my grandmother started to sit down anywhere, she would find seven or eight dead flies on the chair. One day I was sitting by the piano while my grandmother played and sang and Creampuff came into the room. He had not seen my grandmother, apparently, and she was delighted to think that he might be ready to make friends with her. “I’ll just keep on singing,” she said to me in a hurried whisper, “and you tell me what he does.” So my grandmother went on singing “I passed by your window,” and I watched Creampuff. He wandered around the room for a while, and then I noticed that all the time he was watching my grandmother out of the corner of his eye. Suddenly he jumped up on the piano bench, just as my grandmother reached “To bid you good morning, good morning, my dear,” and was quavering on the high note. After one pained glance at my grandmother, Creampuff moved up onto the music stand and began killing flies. He waited until they landed on the music and then smashed them. My grandmother, torn between artistic integrity and absolute fury, finally left the room herself, upon which Creampuff grinned evilly at me, knocked the music off the stand, and went out of our lives. I don’t know whatever happened to him; apparently he felt that his work in our house was finished.

After that my father put his foot down, and for a while there were no more cats in our house. Things went along quietly, no internal strife; my mother got herself a little dog, which became very fond of my grandmother, and used to come to her to have its stomach scratched.

Then one day I let a kitten follow me home, and it started again, worse than before. I named the kitten Nick, and since my grandmother was out of town the weekend I found him, he had time to make himself at home and adapt himself to the dog. He appeared to be a dear, lovable little kitten, until my grandmother walked in the front door. “Oh, a
kitten!”
my grandmother shrieked. “Wuz e a tweet ’ittle ting.” Nick made a cat noise in his throat and charged. My grandmother, who had been bending over to look Nick in the eye, lost a good part of her coiffure.

From that time on, Nick turned into the prize of all our cats. He developed an attitude toward my grandmother that made Flossie and Creampuff seem like amateurs, and this time my grandmother lost her noncombatant bearing and tore into Nick, giving as good as she got. When Nick found a secret passageway through the furnace gratings that would lead him into my grandmother’s room when she had all her doors and windows closed, and used this passageway to sneak in at night and jump up and down on her stomach, my grandmother filled the bathtub full of lukewarm water and dropped Nick in. Once my grandmother made a cake and left it, freshly iced, on the kitchen table to cool, and Nick walked around the top of it, making a pretty design. That time my grandmother caught Nick and put him under a dishpan turned upside down on the floor, and then she sat beside it and beat on the top with a spoon. It got so none of us were surprised when we would see Nick racing around the house and my grandmother after him with a broom.

“I think your grandmother’s losing her mind, young woman,” my mother said to me.

“Nick means no harm,” I said.

“Your grandmother’s plotting evil,” my mother said.

When my brother ran the family car into a telephone pole, my grandmother was heard to say darkly that it was plainly more of that cat’s doing, and then one morning the doorbell rang and my grandmother opened the door and a very small yellow bird was sitting on the porch. “What do
you
want?” my grandmother asked, but before the bird had a chance to answer, Nick, obviously concluding that this was a friend of my grandmother’s, hurried out of the door and captured the bird, which he took away with him. My grandmother, looking very thoughtful, went out and bought a canary in a cage, which she presented to my mother. A few days later my grandmother rushed into the bedroom, where my mother was quietly teaching me how to make buttonholes, and screamed: “Hurry, that cat is after the canary, I always knew it!” My mother and I rushed downstairs, my mother armed with a darning
egg
, and found Nick on top of the canary’s cage. The canary was swinging back and forth, caroling tenderly to Nick, who was eating the lettuce that my mother had put between the cage bars. My grandmother was staggered for a minute, but finally she recovered herself enough to point accusingly at Nick, who was watching her comfortably, with a little piece of lettuce hanging out of his mouth, and said dramatically: “Didn’t I always say so? A born thief!”

Later on my grandmother went to bed with a cold cloth on her head, and my mother and I settled the question of Nick.

“Young woman, either that cat leaves this house, or I will not be responsible for your grandmother,” my mother said.

“Possibly there is someone I could give him to, someone we don’t know very well,” I said. “Someone who doesn’t come here very often.”

“I’ll speak to your father,” my mother said. We both knew that my grandmother would never allow herself to be intimidated by a cat; either there had to be a good and sufficient reason for Nick to go,
or
my grandmother would fight it out on her home grounds until something gave. Apparently my mother spoke to my father; the next morning when she went up to see how my grandmother was feeling, she told my grandmother that Nick and my father had had a run-in, and Nick was leaving.

“Give him to me,” my grandmother said. “I’ve been thinking of leaving myself.”

“You want him?” my mother said, astounded.

“Think I’d let a fine cat like that go out of the family?” my grandmother said.

My grandmother and Nick went south for a while; we had weekly bulletins from my grandmother, saying that Nick had run away, Nick had bitten a train conductor, Nick had torn up all the hotel pillows, Nick had fallen into the ocean, Nick had hurt his paw in a fight with a crocodile (this was a subject to which we could never persuade my grandmother to return; she said she didn’t like to think about it), Nick was tired of traveling and they were coming home. They came home, my grandmother vigorous and brown, Nick thinner and looking rather tired.

“Traveling agrees with us,” said my grandmother, “doesn’t it, Nicky-boy?” She pulled Nick’s ear affectionately. Nick purred.

Nick soon afterward died as a result of a run-in with a Chevrolet, and my grandmother got another cat, a sleek black creature with an angel face.

“Tough, isn’t he?” said my grandmother when she brought him home. She had named him Mo after my grandfather. It soon developed that Mo was an eccentric; he lived entirely on salmon and cantaloupe; when cantaloupe was out of season he would eat strawberries. He used to sleep on the stairs, on the top stair but one. This led to a tiff with my brother, who used to come rushing in through the front door and up the stairs as fast as he could, and every time my brother started up the stairs fast, Mo would sit up and yawn just as my brother came to him, and my brother would trip.

One day my brother came in through the front door fast, and, suddenly remembering Mo, stopped and looked to see if Mo was there. Mo was. So my brother turned around to my grandmother, who was sitting in the living room knitting a hat for my father, and said that this time he was going to teach that cat a thing or two. Then my brother walked slowly up the stairs and picked Mo up and brought him downstairs and set him on the floor. With Mo sitting at the foot of the stairs watching, my brother walked up the stairs very carefully, and then turned around and walked down. “See, I didn’t fall once,” he said to Mo. He tried it once more, walking up very slowly and then down again. Then he said to Mo: “Okay, watch this.” And he went outside the front door and then slammed it open, running in and up the stairs, and he got halfway up and he tripped and fell flat on his face. Mo sat down below with a serious expression, watching my brother lying there talking to himself. Then, still without speaking to Mo, my brother came down the stairs and turned around and raced up again as fast as he could go, and this time Mo ran, too, and he beat my brother to the top and my brother tripped over him and fell again.

My grandmother came out into the hall and asked pleasantly: “Fall down, dear?” Mo came walking down and followed my grandmother out into the kitchen, where she gave him a dish of strawberries, and my brother put his head through the banisters and lay there groaning until my mother came and picked him up.

My grandmother finally broke Mo’s spirit. She first tied a ribbon around his neck; when this didn’t seem to work, she put a bell on the ribbon. She explained to me that this also made him a good watch-cat; he could not endure having anyone come into the house without seeing if he could do something to them, and if he moved, my grandmother, who was a light sleeper from the time when Nick used to jump up and down on her stomach—my grandmother would hear the bell and come down to get the burglars. This would probably have worked out very well, but unfortunately Mo had a fit because every time he tried to sleep the bell would ring.

My grandmother seemed very put out when Mo died.

“I always used to feel safe with him in the house,” she said wistfully. “Much safer than I did with your grandfather.”