Lady (7 page)

On the riverbank there was always a fire burning, a great heap of scavenged rubber tires which sent up clouds of smelly black smoke, but whose warmth was comforting as the sun started to sink. When it got too dark to see, we would hang our skates over our shoulders and hike back up the windy hill to the Green, where Nonnie would have supper waiting to be put on the table by the time Ma got off the streetcar from the Sunbeam Laundry. Nonnie was always cranky and out of sorts these days. Her voice was shrill and mean, and she was forever carping at us for tracking in snow or leaving wet shoes under the radiator, which made their toes curl. Poor red-faced, angry Nonnie, who never sang anymore or played with Kerney or helped us zip our jackets up. I could tell that the whole trouble was her disappointment at not being able to go to college, and that the burden of looking after four brothers and a sister, and the house, was beginning to weigh on her.

Because she slammed pots and pans in the sink while we were all doing the washing up, Lew and Harry were glad to escape to the cellar and their newest project: a giant skating sail. While Ag stayed in her room reading magazines or pasting
Photoplay
movie stars in scrapbooks, they worked in the basement. I was allowed only to watch. They cut the canvas cloth themselves and because Nonnie complained she had too much work to do, they inveigled Ma into stitching it up on her sewing machine after work. The frame was a cross of bamboo, selected for its lightness; when it was assembled, the sail produced a kite shape eight feet across, and there were more than thirty square feet of canvas in it.

It was a grand success. One Saturday right after lunch I trailed along as Lew came bearing it down to the Cove. Naturally, he tried it out first. Holding the center staff against his back, one arm over his head, the other behind him, he turned his body so the sail caught the brisk wind, and off he shot across the ice to the far bank. To make his return he tacked the way a sailboat would.

Harry was next, and finally it came to me, and they both jeered because I couldn't manage it as easily as they. Gradually I found the hang of it, and discovered that when I got going too fast it required only a simple movement to toss the sail over my head, spilling the wind and slowing me down.

Then Lew took the sail away from me, and he and Harry spent the rest of the afternoon with it, in betweentimes selling rides to other kids for a dime. I got one last turn, then reluctantly handed the sail over to Lew. Skating back to shore under my own power, I looked up to Mrs. Harleigh's house on the crest of the hill. At a second-story window I could see that the shade was up and I was able to make out a face behind the glass.

Next day she came out. She wore a long flannel skirt and a little black fur jacket. Her hair was enclosed by the open end of a tasseled wool scarf. She had on dark stockings and, over these, white ankle socks. I watched from a distance as she sat and laced up her skates, white tops with shiny blades, and then -- stepping on the points of the runners, daintily balanced like a ballet dancer -- with graceful strokes she floated out onto the ice. A good skater, she turned easily and her ankles showed no signs of buckling. When she had cut several figures, as though testing her strength, she skated over to me.

"Isn't it glorious!" There was the familiar laugh, but no indication of remembering our last meeting. She looked pale and there were dark places under her eyes. I could feel her hand tremble as she took mine and we skated together, out of the way of the flying hockey puck, toward the opposite side of the Cove.

"You boys are having such fun with that sail," she said when we stopped to catch our breaths. "Where did you get it?" She was surprised when I said Lew and Harry had built it. "I must try it one of these days. First I'll have to get my sea legs back. It's been years since I skated."

She spun off a little way toward a clump of frozen reeds, the scarf twirling behind her head. She held her hands out to me and I skated to her. We clutched arms, laughing together, and as we met I lost my balance and we both sat down. When we struck the ice, there was an ominous crack.

"I remember," she said, helping me scramble up and drawing me away from the spot. "It's always thin there, where the bulrushes grow. It must have something to do with the current."

Before she left, she spoke with Rabbit Hornaday, who helped her off with her skates, then walked up the hill with her. She even took his hand! I was furious. More furious shortly thereafter, for the next time Rabbit appeared he had a brand-new pair of skates slung over his shoulders, the latest kind, and by no means cheap. I was sure I knew where he had gotten them, and when Lady came again to take a spin on the ice I joined the hockey game and pretended not to see her. She waved, then went skating off with Rabbit, and I got madder. But I couldn't hold out for long, and the minute Rabbit left her, I raced to her side.

She came often after that, sometimes skating alone, sometimes with Rabbit, but there would always be a quarter of an hour when she would suggest we skate together, sometimes hand in hand, returning red-faced and out of breath to the shore where she would remove her skates and go up the hill to supper behind the drawn shades of the dining room.

Though I waited for another invitation to the house, none came. Nor was any mention made of the "little veal-cutlet supper," or the promised musical evening, or of my shoveling money. It was as though she had forgotten the entire episode. Though friendly, she seemed nervous and edgy, rather brittle like the ice, if not as cold, but in no way inclined to further our friendship.

All this changed, however, one day later in the same month, when I suffered an accident which, had Lady not come to my rescue, might have ended my life. There had been a brief thaw, then another freeze. I had arrived home from my music lesson with Mr. Auerbach and, finding Lew and Harry out, I sneaked the bundled-up skate sail down to the Cove, where I planned on practicing alone. It was a bright breezy afternoon and, except for some younger kids scooting about near the shore, I had the river to myself. At the first gust of wind I lofted the sail, set it behind my back, and, leaning into the canvas, went flying across the ice. I worked my way upriver for a time, then let the force of nature return me on a free and easy tack, leaning back into the sail so it carried my weight along. The wind was blowing stronger. It bit my nose and I had to keep my mouth closed so it wouldn't hurt the fillings in my teeth.

After nearly an hour of sailing I was prepared to call it quits when I saw, some distance downriver, the familiar black-jacketed figure with its swirl of striped scarf. I waved but she didn't see me. I leaned into the sail at an angle calculated to drive me directly toward her, the wind catching the canvas, catapulting me along. I gripped the bamboo brace more tightly, and continued to gather speed, hollering to Mrs. Harleigh as I approached.

She raised her head and smiled when I sped past, about thirty feet away, planning at any moment to spill the wind and circle around her. But, thrilled by the speed at which I traveled, and wanting to show off for her, I refused to relinquish the wind and so failed to see the clump of bulrushes looming ahead.

When I heard the first fierce crack of ice, it was already too late to save myself. Mrs. Harleigh cried out. I let go the sail, which flew up in the air and landed with a plop behind me. Unable to check my path, I shot pell-mell along on my own power while the ice splintered all around me. I toed my skates to force myself to a stop, trying at the same time to alter my direction. It was no good. The frozen floor sagged under my weight, then gave way altogether. Oozing cracks appeared all around me, the ice parted, broke, and I sank into the river.

Grabbing the edge of the ice, I tried to pull myself up, only to have it break under my chest, and I continued to flounder.

"Wait! Don't thrash about so!" I heard the voice ring out, and looked to see Mrs. Harleigh skate up to a neat stop a safe distance away. A space of eight or ten feet separated us. Another step and the ice cracked again. Quickly she spun around and scooped up the sail. She threw it in front of her, then lay flat on the ice and slid the bamboo so that by reaching I could grab the tip. Switching to a sitting position, she dug the heels of her skate runners into the ice and held fast to the kite while I pulled myself out. I flopped onto the sail and in another moment she had dragged both it and me to safety.

When we got to the shore, my corduroy knickers were frozen stiff. She helped me take off my skates, working calmly and swiftly to undo the wet knotted laces. She pulled off my soaking windbreaker, substituted her fur jacket, wrapped my head in her scarf, and, leaving the sail behind, hurried me up the hill.

Elthea must have seen my plight, for when we got to the kitchen Jesse was down cellar stoking the furnace, the teakettle was singing on the stove, there were Turkish towels and warm socks and a robe waiting for me. When Jesse came upstairs, Elthea and Mrs. Harleigh bustled around the room, toweling my hair and securing the wool scarf more tightly around my neck, hanging my soaked clothes, and pouring first one cup of tea past my chattering teeth and then another. Elthea said that the river should be posted for "No Skating" and Mrs. Harleigh asked Jesse to bring the Minerva to the kitchen door.

Wrapped in a blanket, my soaked things left with Elthea, I was hustled home to bed in style.

The consequence of this damp adventure was twofold: first on the following day it was discovered I had contracted what was then called the "grippe," and was confined to bed; second, and best, for the term of my illness Mrs. Harleigh became my nurse, saying, "Larks are what this boy needs when he gets well. And larks he shall have." Though in fact they began even before my recovery. Every day, she came across the Green to sit by my bedside while Ma was at the Sunbeam, freeing Nonnie to perform her usual household duties. It was a not unpleasant period for me, and because I did not feel particularly ill my sojourn under the bedcovers was a memorable time. Dosed with Vicks VapoRub and Argyrol drops which stung in my nostrils, with daily visits from Dr. Brainard, and my "nurse" in constant attendance, I recovered gradually. When I was fully up and around again, Ma said I surely must be as spoiled as an apple at the bottom of the barrel.

But during the two weeks I remained in bed my every wish was granted, accepted by Lady as the law of the land. Already I sensed a strong feeling between us, a power which we had over each other. Though I did not know what I could give her, I was selfishly aware of what she could give me, and how easily I could exercise my smallest tyranny on her. My slightest whim might be indulged. I could be read to or played games with, or listened to; my choice of menu was holy writ, and never since have I drunk so much ginger ale or eaten so many sugared crullers or dishes of tapioca.

I loved watching the way she used her hands around my room, as if examining it, the better to know me. The way she puffed up the pillows and smoothed down the sheet, turning the blanket with an exactly measured border, how she leafed the pages of a magazine, or rolled up my rumpled pajamas and dispatched them for Elthea to wash and return ironed -- another first for me -- or precisely aligned my slippers, just within reach if I wanted to go to the bathroom; her slender fingers with their loving touch. How nice it was to know those cool, capable hands feeling my forehead and chest, my pulse, though we both knew it was normal. How nice, and how painful, for -- in my flannels, under the sheets, the thermometer in my mouth -- I was falling in love all over again.

She was such a happy person, and delighted in making me -- all of us -- happy, making us laugh. She could be so comical. Sometimes for my amusement she would use a thick German accent like
The Katzenjammer Kids
-- "Vot's der matter mitt dot?" -- or like Jack Pearl, who did Baron Munchausen on the radio -- "Vas you dere, Sholly?" -- or more often, it would be a phrase from
Krazy Kat
, whose antics she avidly followed, deriving great amusement in the triangle of Krazy, who loved Ignatz "the mice," and Offissa Pup, who was enamored of the Kat. She sorrowed for the Kat. "Poor, feckless Krazy," she said, "always getting beaned by one of Ignatz's bricks." (What did feckless mean? I asked. "Why -- it means -- without feck, I suppose. Come on, let's look it up." Out came the dictionary.) She appropriated much of
Krazy Kat's
vocabulary to her own uses: things with her were often "grend," "magnifishint," and "wondafil." "Fa' goodnitz sakes!" they were. Or she would call me "Ignatz," and say that we were "boom compenions."

She had a collection of stories she enjoyed telling, which she called "The Dreams of a Welsh Rarebit Fiend," whose origins were one of the early Winsor McKay comic strips she'd read as a girl, involving the fanciful adventures of a child who had partaken too greedily of Welsh rarebit and suffered as a result from "extraordinary" dreams, as she called them.
And
, to tell the truth, you had the feeling that maybe her own dreams were in themselves extraordinary for their unsettling and disquieting nature.

Thus, through my childish demands on her love and her compliant ministering to them, because of my needs and her willing solicitude, we became bound together. All those things, careful, kind, and pleasing, which serve to make life enjoyable, became more vivid and intensified under Lady's loving hand. I had never known such indulgence, such benevolence, such lavish attention. And, watching her embroider in the chair by my bed, listening to her happy talk, how wonderful to settle back and take my pick of the bounty of amusements she had provided: Parcheesi or Chinese Checkers; a jigsaw puzzle of the Taj Mahal; a miniature loom or an Indian beading kit; a Kodak Brownie camera, with film; a soap-bubble set; a Winnie Winkle paintbook, in which, by the mere application of a dampened brush, the invisible colors of the Rinkydink gang, Spike, Spud, Chink, and Perry Winkle himself, were brought to life. It was during this period that I discovered the newest and most exciting thing of all: books; and through Lady Harleigh I found how easy it is to be taken out of oneself, to discover new vistas where nothing matters but the world that is on the printed page. Into this unexplored terrain I now ventured at length, traveling far and wide through a Wyeth-illustrated
King Arthur
, and
Treasure Island
,
The Arabian Nights
, Richard Halliburton's
Royal Road to Romance
, Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales; and one called
East of the Sun and West of the Moon
.