Suds In Your Eye (5 page)

‘Gosh! That’d be fine! Better make it a half-hour; I don’t wanta sit around lookin’ at that one’s sour puss any longer’n I hafta!’ and Mrs. Rasmussen sped out the door to beard the lions.

Exactly half an hour later as per agreement Mrs. Feeley and Old-Timer drove up to the home of Mrs. Rasmussen’s daughter in the truck. They hopped down and walked up the steps. Mrs. Rasmussen met them at the door with three unkempt children following her, candles dripping from their noses.

‘How ya doin’?’ Mrs. Feeley inquired.

‘Boy, some luck! I’d forgot this was her an’ Elmer’s day to go for their treatment! They goes once a month for colonic irrigations. Takes all mornin’ to get rid o’ what’s ailin’ them! Ain’t that a break?’

Mrs. Feeley thought it was marvelous. She believed in the line of least resistance herself. While Old-Timer carried the pieces of furniture out to the truck, Mrs. Feeley regaled Mrs. Rasmussen with the tale of the time she foundered on corned beef and cabbage and had to get up in the middle of the night to take a ‘high en-eem-a’ with a catheter.

‘But never go in no medicine chest in the dark!’ she cautioned. ‘I got the Vick’s instead o’ the vaseline!’ They howled with mirth while the three unsavory-looking children stood round open-mouthed.

‘For Chris’sake, come here till I make you Protestant-looking!’ cried Mrs. Feeley, grabbing the biggest one and wiping its nose viciously. ‘That’s better! Looks like Old-Timer’s got the stuff loaded; what say we go?’

Mrs. Rasmussen was writing something on a piece of paper. She gave it to the biggest child and said: ‘You give this to Mom when she comes; she’ll be home in a little while! An’ you kids play nice, now. Here’s three nickels for you: you can get a popsicle when Mom gets here—if she don’t take ’em away from you,’ she added in an elaborate aside to Mrs. Feeley.

With a little skip she led the way out the front door.

They climbed onto the truck while Old-Timer cranked. The truck gave a convulsive shudder, then settled down to a steady roll.

‘Well,’ cried Mrs. Feeley, ‘we’re off…more ways than one!’

Mrs. Rasmussen had to yell to make herself heard over the roar of the truck.

‘I ain’t had so much fun since Maw made soap!’

M
RS. RASMUSSEN’S
gaily painted bed and dresser stood in the center of the house. Her treasured kitchen table with the gleaming chromium legs had been graciously deposited in the parlor corner of the room, ‘where we can all get the good of it; ain’t no kids here to scratch the legs.’ Her sewing machine had also been donated to the common cause. She decided she would keep her trunk and her little padded slipper-chair in her room.

‘There’s only one sheet o’ plywood,’ Mrs. Feeley panted as she dragged it in the back door. ‘But I think we’ll make out okay.’ She paused a minute to look the situation over. ‘Yeup! I’ll just run this piece halfway between the bathroom wall and the front window here. Make a room ’bout eight foot square; reckon your bed’ll fit in?’

Mrs. Rasmussen was sure it would. And those shelves on the outside wall would be real handy to set things on, too.

‘’Course your partition ain’t gonna be so very high,’ Mrs. Feeley warned. ‘But long as it’s private, that’s the main thing.’

‘How you gonna close off the front?’ Mrs. Rasmussen inquired.

‘I already figgered that one out. We’ll run a wire from your partition to the bathroom wall an’ hang them por-teers on it.’

Mrs. Feeley dived under the brass bed and brought out a large bundle of heavy rose velour curtains. When she spread them out it was evident that they had once been part of the
décor
of an elaborate lounge. They were lavishly trimmed with gold galloon; the letters A. C. were embroidered in gold thread on each section of the draperies. The departed Mr. Feeley had not been idle at the rape of the Hotel Agua Caliente.

‘I been wonderin’ if I could use ’em for them blackout curtains that feller’s been hollerin’ about, but they’re most too pretty for that!’

‘They sure are,’ Mrs. Rasmussen agreed. The idea that they were to be part of her room thrilled her, and she remarked blissfully, ‘Them letters is a foot high if they’re a inch!’

Mrs. Feeley fell to with a will and an astonishing amount of ability. She marked off the places on the plywood sheet that were to be sawed out in order to make it fit neatly at right angles to the shelves along the outside wall. While Mrs. Rasmussen nailed the plywood in place, Mrs. Feeley went out to the junk yard to find a two-by-four to use as a support for the edge of the partition. She needed a long one, for she planned to run it all the way to the ceiling from the outside edge of the plywood. No use doing a thing if you were not going to do it right. She returned with the two-by-four and Old-Timer, carrying a stepladder. He would have to climb up on the ladder and nail it to the rafters. A man came in handy for things like that.

Soon the partition was up and firmly anchored in place. The wire was then stretched across the front of the little cubicle and the rose-colored curtains gracefully disposed upon it. The wire sagged in the middle from the weight of the curtains, but Old-Timer had just the kind of bolt out in his shed that would remedy the condition.

‘Looks like a nutcracker, don’t it?’ remarked Mrs. Rasmussen as she watched Old-Timer adjust the bolt and give it a few turns to pull the wire up taut and straight. ‘Every time the wire starts to sag, we can give her a few turns and she’ll be just as tight as new!’

The three of them sat down to admire their handiwork and have a cold beer. The painted bedstead and dresser did look nice with the rose ‘drapes’ pulled back that way. As she sipped her beer, Mrs. Rasmussen surveyed her new room through narrowed eyes: she was imagining how nice those shelves back of her bed were going to look when she got hold of a couple of cans of pink and blue enamel and some of those little pottery animals at the five-and-dime. No kids to knock them off, either.

‘Well, it sure looks fine, if I do say so as shouldn’t,’ said Mrs. Feeley, rocking happily.

‘It’s elegant, that’s what it is!’ Mrs. Rasmussen agreed. Then remembering the sordid business details, she asked, ‘How much must I pay you?’

‘Now, that’s right hard to say! I ain’t never rented no rooms before. What would you say it was worth?’ countered Mrs. Feeley.

‘Well, I was payin’ twenty over there for room an’ board, such as it was. I guess it would be fair an’ square if I paid you ten a month for the room an’ we split the eats money between us.’

‘Ten’s a large plenty for the room, but how will I figger Old-Timer in on the eats money? He gets wages when we sell enough stuff; but he don’t worry none ’cause he’s got his room out in the shed an’ I board him free, too.’

‘I could put in ten dollars on the eats every month, an’ you could put in whatever the difference is for you an’ Old-Timer,’ Mrs. Rasmussen suggested. ‘If you want, I’ll
do the buyin’ an’ cookin’; I could keep track of every cent we spend, and that way we’d know exactly what it cost us to eat…and drink!’

Mrs. Feeley was vastly impressed by Mrs. Rasmussen’s budgeting plan. She got up and got her large black-leather purse and got right down to cases.

‘Okay! Here’s ten for me, an’ ten for Old-Timer. We can start the month right from today. You keep the money anywhere you want: that there’s house-money!’

Mrs. Rasmussen brought out her loot bag and handed Mrs. Feeley a ten-dollar bill.

‘That’s my room rent: third o’ April to the third o’ May. Right? Now, here’s my board money!’ And she put a second ten-dollar bill with the two tens Mrs. Feeley had given into her keeping.

Mrs. Feeley’s eyes bugged in her head, for she knew Mrs. Rasmussen had not yet had a chance to cash her April pension check. It had arrived only that morning. Mrs. Rasmussen caught the look and knew what Mrs. Feeley was thinking.

‘Ain’t nobody seen the bottom o’ my sock!’ she whispered.

Mrs. Feeley rocked and mused aloud.

‘It sure sounds like a dream to me, if you can pull us through on thirty dollars for eats. Why, countin’ what you give me for room rent, it’ll only cost ten a month for me an’ Old-Timer both! If it works!’ she added a little wistfully.

‘It’ll work, all right! An’ if I get any good breaks on marketin’, ten o’ that eats money is goin’ in the beer kitty. If we goes in the hole for food, we gotta take it outa the beer fund!’

Mrs. Rasmussen was so enthused over her own plan that she jumped up and started unpacking her fresh cotton dresses. She pulled the curtains to, then stuck her head out between them and said:

‘Guess I better change my clothes an’ go down an’ do my shoppin’ for supper! While I think of it, I seen a swell crock out in the yard! Could I use it? I’d like to put down a mess o’ roll-mops. Sure go good with the beer!’

Mrs. Feeley granted permission and licked her chops in anticipation. She knew Mrs. Rasmussen’s savory stuffed and rolled fish, and the tangy mixture she used to pickle them in; but she had never expected to be a shareholder in a crock of them stowed right under her own kitchen sink.

By suppertime Mrs. Rasmussen’s influence at Noah’s Ark could be strongly felt. The table was spread with a gay plaid cloth, beautifully ironed. Something was bubbling enticingly on the stove in a huge cast-iron Dutch oven. Outside, picking the seed pods off the sweetpeas, Mrs. Feeley could have sworn the aroma coming from the house was from wine. Her nose had not betrayed her. In a little while Mrs. Rasmussen told them to come and get it.

Old-Timer washed noisily and splashily at the sink. Then they sat down to a supper of oxtails

and carrots braised in sherry, rye bread with caraway seeds, beets, cabbage, and green onions chopped fine in a thin dressing of sour cream, and a dish of stewed plums.

‘Gawd!’ breathed Mrs. Feeley. ‘Whadja do? Blow the wad on one meal?’ she laughed.

‘That’ll be the day! Not me, lady!’ replied the chef proudly. ‘Them oxtails is six cents a pound, an’ five pounds of ’em will give us enough for tonight an’ for dinner tomorrow. I did get a pint o’ sherry, though. That was fifteen cents, but it sure fixes them oxtails.’

Her companions agreed that it did all of that and then some.

‘Then,’ she continued the tale of her achievements, ‘I stopped down at the bakery wholesale on G Street, ’cause it was after five. That’s when they bring back all the bread, cake, an’ rolls that ain’t been sold in the retail stores. It’s this mornin’s stuff; just as good as it ever was. Only thing, it only costs half as much. Got all this rye bread an’ a loaf o’ whole wheat raisin nut bread an’ a big coffee cake for breakfast tomorra, all for twenty-one cents.’

The other two were speechless. Mrs. Feeley could now understand how Mrs. Rasmussen could have those two ten-dollar bills left in her purse at the end of the month.

They were just attacking their second round when a timid knock came at the door.

‘May I come in?’ It was Miss Tinkham.

‘Sure!’ cried Mrs. Feeley heartily. ‘Get yourself a plate an’ set down! We got some elegant grub all right since Mrs. Rasmussen took over.’

‘Thank you ever so much, but I’m afraid I couldn’t swallow a bite.’

Mrs. Feeley scented trouble when Miss Tinkham couldn’t eat.

‘Couldn’t you find a room?’

‘That was bad enough, but now something else has happened to complicate matters: my lawyer back home informs me that my house is vacant, so I shan’t have a cent of income till it is rented again!’ And she spread the letter out on the table for her friends to see.

‘That’s a different load o’ poles, ain’t it?’

No use asking her if she had a nest-egg tucked away anywhere, Mrs. Feeley decided.

‘Well, you come visit us awhile till you get squared away. We fixed a real cozy place for Mrs. Rasmussen an’ we’ll figger out some way to put you up till you get back on your feet. Don’t you worry ’bout the expense; Mrs. Rasmussen’s the manager now, an’ she’ll pull us through.’

Miss Tinkham was about to dissolve in tears of gratitude, Mrs. Feeley could see. She got up and put her hand on Miss Tinkham’s shoulder and said:

‘What was that you was tellin’ me th’other day ’bout “Cheerio”?’

‘Oh, you mean—“It’s Cheerio, my deario, that pulls a lady through.”’ Miss Tinkham recovered her poise and was cheered by Mehitabel’s philosophy. ‘That is what the cat said in the poem. She had another thought I liked, too: A lady can always find friends.’

‘She sure can, dear!’ Mrs. Feeley agreed. Mrs. Rasmussen and Old-Timer waggled their heads in agreement too. Mrs. Feeley set a cold beer down in front of Miss Tinkham and said:

‘Drink that an’ fergit your troubles! We ain’t never starved a winter yet!’

So for the second time that day Old-Timer rolled out the truck and set off with Miss Tinkham to transport her belongings to Mrs. Feeley’s warm hearth. She felt a little bit nervous as she climbed into the truck with him, for she had just remembered who it was he reminded her of with his ruddy cheeks, big bulging blue eyes, and enormous white handle-bar mustache: it was that awful old man on the cover of those
Esquire
magazines she peeped into surreptitiously in the second-hand magazine stores. She hoped Old-Timer wouldn’t act like him! With all she had been through during the day she felt completely unable to cope with him if he should make a pass at her.