Life Among the Savages (22 page)

“Brownies,” Jannie said. “You promised you would make brownies for the school party.”

“I must have been crazy,” I said. I leaned back comfortably. “My
own
activities, it says here,” I said. “Taking a nap, for instance.”

Jannie laughed shortly. “That is the silliest thing I ever did hear,” she said. “What does it ever say in there about mommies sleeping?”

“It says I should be relaxed.” I ran my finger hopefully down the lines. “It says naturally Mother is not going to handicap her children by teaching them insecure patterns of behavior; what would we think, for instance, of a mother who believed herself fond of her children, who nevertheless allowed them to see her in a temper? Or who told them obviously untruthful stories, broke promises, or showed malice?”

“You better make those brownies,” Jannie said acutely. “What does show mals mean?”

“You remember?” I asked, “when you told Daddy about my running the car into a telephone pole?”

Jannie grinned. “You said I was a tattletale. You said I—”

“Yes,” I said. “Well, that was foursquare, honest-to-goodness malice, right off the boat, and according to the lady who wrote this I should never have said it.”

“Well, I'm not a—”

“You are
so
. And every time I think of your babbling to Daddy about that telephone pole I want to—”

“
I
didn't,” Sally said. “
I
didn't tell Daddy anything. I will tell him now,” and I grabbed for her too late as she slid off the couch again and went to the study door. “Go away,” her father said, as she opened it.

“Mommy hit a pole,” Sally said.

“Again?”
My husband's voice rose.

“No, no, no, no, no,” I said, coming after Sally. “Sally was just chattering.”

“Tattletale,” Jannie said promptly.

I stepped in front of her and asked gracefully, “How are the new coins coming along?”

Laurie smiled at me weakly. “So far,” he said, “we have a hundred and seventy-five counterfeits.”

“Oh, splendid,” I said. “I thought there were only a hundred to start with. How does it happen that—”

“Will you
please
close that
door?
” my husband said.

The girls skittering ahead of me, I closed the door sharply and went through the living room and into the kitchen, where I brought up sharply before the sink and the breakfast dishes. “Well,” I said brightly, “time to get to work.”

“Did Daddy show mals?” Jannie asked. “Who was the lady who wrote all those things?”

“A lady who works with children,” I said absent-mindedly, wondering at a sound which came from the study as of many coins crashing against the wall, and calculating with another part of my mind whether there was enough chocolate for brownies, or whether I would have to run out and get some, and hearing with still another part of my mind Jannie's wise voice saying, “Not like mommies, then. Ladies work with children, and mommies
play
with them.”

“And
you
're a snick,” Sally said.

Dreamily, rinsing glasses, I had wandered on to cheerful reflections on our holiday season, which included, besides Christmas and Thanksgiving, five birthdays and an anniversary, and which seemed to be racing on with its usual neckbreaking speed, although it seemed at the same time that the days would never pass. It seemed, too, increasingly clear that our hopes for a sixth birthday in our family during the holiday season might be optimistic; the suitcase which Jannie and I share was sitting, packed, in the corner of the bedroom, contemplated lovingly by me the last thing at night and the first thing in the morning—although, as it turned out, what I was contemplating lovingly this time was a suitcase containing Jannie's yellow sundress and a jigsaw puzzle, with which she had secretly replaced my blue satin bedjacket and a dozen mystery stories and a rough draft of an informative letter beginning “Dear . . . Well, we have a new son/ daughter, and so this makes two pair/three of a kind . . .” Since I did not find out, as it happened, that Jannie had repacked the suitcase until I reached the hospital, my fond regard was not in any way tarnished, although secret fears about last-minute Christmas shopping had touched the back of my mind. The same old baby clothes, much the worse for Sally's vigorous infancy, were in the bottom dresser drawer, and there was half a can of Dextro-Maltose i in the kitchen cabinet. “It's the home stretch again,” my doctor told me affably, apparently relying upon some medical doctrine about any metaphor suiting—by now—the mother of four, “out of the trenches by Christmas.” He used to laugh every time he said this.

Oddly enough, the children were able to continue their theoretically normal lives. Laurie pursued his project, for which he vaguely believed he would have a silver arrow from the Cub Scouts, of writing down all the numbers in sequence until he reached infinity; he was at this time well up into the millions, with infinity nowhere in sight. Sally was comfortably settled in nursery school, from which she brought home daily bulletins about a Mr. Grassable (who had as friends Mr. Dirtable and Mr. Sandable) and a gentleman named David who brought gum with him every morning. Jannie followed her own social life, which was only nominally affected by our family holiday season, and which required a good deal of backing and filling on my part. I became reconciled to the last-minute race to town to pick up a book or a toy or a paint set for Jannie to take to a party; invitations arrived by mail and by phone, and it was at last necessary to invest in three extra pair of white socks, to take care of Jannie's social obligations. The afternoon of Rita's party we climbed into the car, Jannie and I, at three o'clock, thanking heaven that Sally had chosen to sleep until now, and making a final check before we started. Jannie was wearing her green party dress, which she had of course chosen herself; it had a tiny white collar and rows of smocking. She had on the official white socks and her school shoes neatly shined, by me. Her best coat still fit her—although it had begun to look like Sally in another month or so—and she was wearing her green beret. She was carrying a small package with a carefully chosen doll inside; the package was wrapped in green tissue paper and the card enclosed was signed, typically, “ennaoJ.” There were green bows on her pigtails, and she was wearing, as a special favor, her coral necklace. She looked very grown-up, and unbelievably pretty.

“Have you got a handkerchief?” I asked her before I started the car, and she nodded gravely, deeply aware of her green bows.

“I brought my invitation,” she said. “In case we forgot the time or something.”

“I only wish I knew more about the people,” I said, looking at the invitation with hope, as though its pattern of pink balloons and bright lettering might somehow indicate what sort of person had paid a dime for six of them at the five and ten; “I feel a little bit worried, letting you go off to a strange house.”

“I got an
invitation
,” Jannie said.

I sighed, and started the car. “She sounded all
right
,” I said, “the little girl's mother, I mean. When I called her to get directions to the house, she sounded all right. Richmond Road,” I said, “and turn left at the private school.”

“I say ‘Thank you very much, Mrs. Arden,' when I'm ready to go home.”

“Did you say you had a handkerchief?” We turned onto Richmond Road and Jannie settled back and folded her hands in her lap, no longer the everyday Jannie who rode with me, in her blue snow suit, to the grocery and the post office and the bakery, but a dressed-up lady in a white collar and a green beret; “Is Rita a polite little girl?” I asked with great casualness.

“She's all right,” Jannie said. “From school.”

I have always remembered a birthday party I went to where all the children were older, and strangers, and I sat in a corner all afternoon determined not to cry. “Do you know who else will be there?”

“Pals of mine,” Jannie said, exasperated. “From
school
.”

“I suppose it's all right,” I said.

“Well, now that I'm all dressed and everything,” Jannie said.

I peered through the window. “Left at the private school,” I said. “We watch for Overlea Drive and turn right. Then there's a sign saying Arden halfway up the hill. She said we couldn't miss it.”

“Tell Sally I'll bring her some candy,” Jannie said as we made a hesitant left turn around the private school, “and I'll bring Laurie some cake. And don't plan on any supper for
me
tonight—I'll be too full from the party. And the invitation says the party is over at five, so you come and get me maybe about five-thirty. That,” she explained, “will give me time to pick up candy and stuff that people have forgotten about, so I can bring it to Sally.”

“Have you got a handkerchief? Overlea Drive.”

“And I say,” Jannie went on, her tone sharpening, “I say ‘Thank you, Mrs. Arden,' when I'm ready to come home. And I
have
got a handkerchief.”

“Sign saying Arden,” I said, “sign saying Arden.”

“I've never been here before, you know,” Jannie said. “Rita doesn't take the school bus.”

“I'm surprised, living so far away from the school,” I said. “Sign saying Arden, Private Road.”

I turned the car and had to shift into second. “The chauffeur brings her,” Jannie said. “I wonder if that's Rita's house way up there?”

It was the only house in sight. We were driving past terraced lawns, rich with ornamental trees and graveled walks; I saw a sundial and what may have been a swimming pool. Above us, on the top of the hill, the house looked like someone's dream of a country club, with picture windows and fieldstone and gabled roofs. “Is that where
we
're going?” I asked, turning to look at Jannie.

“Seven chimneys,” she said. “Rita always
said
she lived in a big house.”

We turned onto a circled driveway which took us past a garage holding, I thought, three foreign cars, and came around to the front door. We stopped abruptly because the car parked by the front door was so soft and low and shiny that the irresistable thought of bumping it and perhaps putting a scratch on its fender (that
was
a fender?) made my teeth chatter. One of a pair of matched gray poodles rose lazily from the wide front steps and looked down at us. “Jannie,” I said, “look, honey, I've only got on my blue jeans and my old jacket. And my loafers. I'll just wait here and you run on up and ring the door bell. I'll just wait here and see that you get in all right.”

Jannie turned and stared at me. “Why don't you come up to the door?” she said. “You're my mother, aren't you?”

“Yes,” I said doubtfully, and climbed out after her. She ran up the steps, nodded cheerfully at the poodles when they approached her, and rang the bell; I followed gingerly, edging up the steps and moving aside briskly when one of the poodles came too close. I had a sudden rich picture of the years ahead, with me hanging around in the shrubbery trying to catch a glimpse of my beautifully-gowned daughter waltzing in the ballroom, and then the door was opened by a maid in a yellow uniform, and behind her clustered a group of little girls in party dresses pink, blue, and white.

“Hi, kids,” said Jannie.

“It's
Joanne
,” said a little girl in blue, who was apparently the hostess, “
now
we can start the party.”

“And
this
,” said Jannie grandly, “is
my
mother.”

The little girl in blue curtsied, I almost curtsied back, and Jannie said, as they turned to go inside, “
We
live in a bigger house than
this
,” and then called back to me, “Don't forget to tell Sally what I'm bringing her,” as the door closed.

When I came back to get Jannie at five-fifteen, which I thought a neat compromise on time between the invitation and Jannie's obviously superior planning, I had put on a skirt and a pair of decent shoes. When I rang the doorbell the maid asked me inside, and I waited for barely a minute, listening to the sound of small girls' voices screaming happily from somewhere within, before a woman in gray taffeta and what were probably real emeralds—I would have believed anything by then—came to me, holding out both her hands to take mine.

“So
you
're Joanne's mother,” she said. “
Won't
you come in and have a drink?”

 

 

 

AT ABOUT FOUR o'clock on a Thursday afternoon the express man delivered a huge cardboard box containing a vast collection of curtains and drapes, found in an attic and sent along by my mother, in the hopes that I could use some and make the rest into slip covers or bedspreads or dusting cloths. I took the curtains out and left the big box in the front hall, meaning to take it out and leave it for the trash man when I came downstairs to make dinner. At about four-ten Laurie came out of his room, where he had been painting, and wandered into the bedroom where I was sorting the curtains out on the bed.

“What's the big box downstairs?”

“Some things came in it,” I said.

“Presents?”

“No, these curtains.”

“Who wants
curtains?
”

At about four-thirteen Sally woke up from her nap, and went down the stairs head first, on her stomach, bumping from step to step and calling me. When she finally found me in the bedroom, after calling me through all the rooms in the house, she asked immediately, “Is it for me?”