We Five (6 page)

“She's fine. All of my sisters are doing well.”

“I really wish you wouldn't call them your sisters. By proper definition, they really
aren't
your sisters, now are they? They are your friends. The only real family you have in the world is sitting right here, still wondering why you've hardly touched your waffles. And after I bought a brand new tin of Log Cabin syrup! Pure cane and maple syrup. Not that cheap Temtor Maple
Flavor
stuff. I don't know what's in that rot. It looks like motor oil.”

“The waffles are soggy, Mother, and I haven't put
any
syrup on them, real or otherwise. I don't think you left them in the iron long enough.”

“I wish Vitula weren't sick so often. I worry she has T.B.—that little cough she always has.”

“I think she coughs because she smokes, Mother. I think she steals a puff or two when you aren't looking.”

Mrs. Hale harrumphed. “It's so unbecoming—women who smoke. Like those wanton flappers. Drink your orange juice.”

“There's a gnat in it.”

“I don't know why we came out here.” Mrs. Hale blotted the corners of her mouth (which, like her daughter's mouth, had welcomed very little food inside) and placed her crumpled napkin next to her plate. “Who knew we'd have to contend with Mrs. Littlejohn so early in the morning?”

“I like it out here, Mother. And I'm glad Maggie and Molly are late, because it gives me the chance to discuss something with you that's been on my mind for a couple of days now.”

“What is it, dear? I so hate it when things trouble you, and you keep it all bottled up inside. It isn't healthy.”

“It isn't something that's necessarily
troubling
me, Mother. It's just something that came up, which I've been meaning to talk to you about.”

Sylvia Hale gave her daughter a look with which Carrie was quite familiar. It involved a rimpling of the lips and a slight bulging of the eyes and it said, “I don't believe any part of the statement you just made but will pretend otherwise through this fixed expression, certain to indicate full acceptance of whatever banana oil you might wish to peddle me.” At the same time she gurgled, “And of course there should be nothing of any
substance
bothering you, my dear. For aren't things, on the whole, going quite well for us? You have that nice new job with Sister Lydia, and I have my charity work, and there is enough rental income from the properties your grandfather left me that we want for very little, so long as we don't become
too
extravagant in our tastes.”

A pause. A breath. An opening.

“Well, you know, Mother, it's very interesting Mrs. Littlejohn should mention the Prowses. Because I just happened to bump into Bella Prowse at Blue Delft on Saturday.”

An arched brow. “Oh, you're calling her
Bella,
now, are you?”

“Well, she
does
live next door to us, Mother. And I
do
happen to remember her from grammar school. Anyway, I was buying those nut-center chocolates you asked me to get for the piano candy dish, and I was standing in front of the Johnston's display.”

“Yes, I noticed they were having a sale—the dollar boxes of the mixed chocolates were going for eighty cents to the pound. You are a savvy shopper for that to have caught your eye.”

“I'd like to finish, Mother.”

Receding, chastened, into her chair: “Please.”

“Anyway, I look to my side and there she is—”

“Rolled-down stockings and her skirt up to here, and she was probably wearing a long enough rope of those ridiculous shell beads that you could slice it all up and have enough
normal
-length necklaces for half the women on this block.”

“Mother,
please
!”

A pantomimic buttoned lip. A nod. A hand upon the teapot. A declining wave from her daughter.

“
So
.
Anyway
. We exchanged a polite greeting, and she asked me if the music from the party the night before had bothered us, and I could hardly keep from smiling, because I
do
remember how loud it was—the music and the sound of the motor cars coming and going—and, yes, there was drinking, and how does one defend something like that—well, of course you can't because it's against the law—I'm not saying anything you aren't already thinking, Mother, in big bold letters, but the way she said it, it was almost as if she were wishing I
had
come over and told her to soften the gramophone and make her raucous guests behave themselves.”

“And why do you say this?”

“Because I think she was looking for an excuse to invite me to her party.”

“And why ever would you say
that
? Oh dear, is that another smudge? Have you been playing Cinderella in the fireplace, sweet?”

Mrs. Hale licked a finger to saliva-dab away the offensive speck, but Carrie pulled herself out of reach, drew a handkerchief from her strap purse, and applied it to the cursed spot. “I'm sure it's cinders in the air. Zenith has dirty air from all of its factories. Or haven't you noticed? Sometimes I think
your
face looks smudged as well.”

Mrs. Hale sighed. “I'd like us to move to California someday. I think you should be in pictures. I think you'd be
divine
in pictures.”

“Thank you, Mother. That was very supportive. May I go on?”

“By all means.”

“I say she might have wanted to ask me in the other night because I actually
did
get an invitation—to her
next
party. It came right after I smiled and said, ‘No, your music never bothers us.'”

“Now why on earth would you say such a dishonest thing as—wait!—did I just hear you say you've been invited to the Prowses' next bacchanal? By that hell-kitten? By that baby-vamp the professor snatched for himself from the bassinet?”

“Oh Mother, sometimes you sound exactly like Mrs. Littlejohn.”

“On
this
point, I shall take that as a compliment.”

“The party is Friday night. Bella's birthday. And I want to go. She said I'm to invite my ‘four girlfriends' as well, and I think I'd very much like to do that.”

“I am absolutely flabber—”

“I've been giving it a lot of thought over the last two—”

“—gasted. You know exactly the sort of crowd that will be there: all the professor's long-hair friends, and, and all the local Bohemians, and every happy violator of the Volstead Act from here to Mohalis—”

Carrie, taking her mother literally for the moment, responded by shaking her head. “I don't think anyone's coming from Winnemac U. She did say she's planning to invite some boys from the A&M here in town. And she told me with all candor the
reason
she's inviting those boys. It's because she thinks it's time for We Five to come out of our clamshells like Venus on the beach—but here's the part I
really
wanted to talk to you about, Mother.”

“The invitation alone isn't sufficient to send me into apoplexy?”

“No, there's more—a little more that was said that day at the candy store which I need your opinion on. And this is about you too, Mother. She said—well, she said we're
boring.
She just came right out with it.”

“Well I
never
!”

“She said you and I are the most drab, the most boring people on the block, and this even includes Mr. Gruber with his string collection. She said it's probably too late for
you
.”

“To do what? To stop being boring?” Sylvia Hale's jaw was set. She could hardly get the words out.

“That's right. But maybe there was hope for
me.
I still had a chance to kick up my heels for a few years before the Grim Reaper came knocking—because wasn't that the purpose of life, after all: to make a little noise before we go quiet into the grave?”

“Good God.”

“Well, I'm quoting her, of course. Like how
she
quoted Edna St. Vincent Millay—that little poem she wrote a couple of years ago.”

Wearily: “What little poem?”

“‘My candle burns at both ends; it will not last the night. But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—it gives a lovely light!'”

“Oh sweet Jesus. She wants
you
to be like
her
!”

“No, Mother. She wants me to
live.
”

“Live fast and die young. I'm faint. Hand me that
Town & Country
. I want to fan myself.”

Carrie handed her mother the magazine, but Mrs. Hale didn't make a breeze with it. Instead, she pointed to the photograph on the cover and said, “Isn't that a pretty gazebo?”

“We
are
boring, Mother. You know we are.”

Sylvia tossed the magazine aside with an indignant snort. “Well, we can't
all
drink from ankle flasks and dance on tables. Is that really something you'd like to do, darling?”

“I don't know just
what
I'd like to do, except sometimes I think I'd like to do a little more than sit at home nearly every night.”

“Well, if you'll permit
me
to be candid, may I just say that your four friends aren't any more exciting than
I
am. Mark my words: you'll drag them to this orgy on Friday night and they'll just—why, they'll just recede into the upholstery.”

“But that's my point. I have found friends—whom I love, please don't misunderstand me, Mother—who are just younger versions of—well—
you.
”

“I may be mistaken, but I think you just insulted me.”

“I love you so much, Mother. But let me kick up my heels just a
little
and see what it feels like.” Carrie got up from her chair so she could put an arm around her mother's shoulder. Through the embrace she could feel her mother trembling slightly. “I promise not to write you out of my life.”

“I don't believe it. That isn't how this scenario usually plays itself out. The daughter skips away and she forgets to write and she doesn't even remember to send her mother a wire on her birthday. Then one day she reappears. Out of the blue. Now she's pregnant with a Negro man's baby or shaking with delirium tremens or some other such ghastly thing. And she isn't the woman's loving daughter anymore.”

“I'll always be your loving daughter, Mother. Whether I choose to bruise my heels on tabletops or not.”

Mrs. Hale took a deep breath and smiled.

“What is it?”

“Something Reverend Mobry said in one of his sermons. He said, ‘God doesn't wish us to embrace life with one finger.' Is this what we've been doing, dear? Have I held you too close? Do people laugh at the mother and daughter homebodies behind their backs?”

“If they're laughing, Mother, then they're rude not to be minding their own business. Because I happen to think I'm the luckiest daughter in the world. I have a mother whom I love and who I know loves me with all her heart.”

“And when someday you find yourself a beau—”

“You
do
want that for me, don't you?”

“Of course I do. But the
right
boy. And you know you aren't likely to find ‘the right boy' among a bunch of roughneck Aggies coaxed into attending one of Mirabella Prowse's wild parties with promises of contraband Canadian whiskey.”

With a chuckle: “Yes, Mother. You are exactly one-hundred-percent right.”

“Here come Molly and Maggie. And Jane isn't with them. So they are merely late. Hurry off now, or you'll all be even later than you already are and have that demanding Miss Colthurst in a ridiculous dither.”

“Sometimes, Mother, you're as awful as Mrs. Littlejohn the way you talk about people.”

Carrie bounced up from her seat and pecked her mother on the cheek. Mrs. Hale reciprocated. Then she pulled back and pointed. “There's a smudge.”

“I'll wear it as a beauty mark. Good-bye, Mother.”

“Good-bye, darling.”

Mrs. Hale watched her daughter dash across the front lawn to join her friends on their delayed morning march to Sister Lydia's Tabernacle of the Sanctified Spirit. Maggie and Molly greeted Carrie's mother with a wave. Mrs. Hale waved back.

As the three friends moved at a quick clip down the sidewalk, Molly apologized for their tardiness. “Maggie was late and then it got even later when I didn't go down right away, because apparently
this
particular morning was one in which she just
wasn't
coming up to get me.”

“Perhaps you don't remember, Molly,” said Maggie, bridling, “that there was a snoring hobo blocking the stairs, and frankly, I didn't care to wake him. You should have been on the lookout for me.”

“Can we please not hash this all out again?” said Molly. “It's such a beautiful day. Why ruin it?”

“As it so happens, Molly, it's already ruined.” Pause. Importantly: “And it was your father who did it.”

“Well, well,
well
! Now you've come out with it. And I should say it's about time.”

Carrie looked puzzled. “Come out with
what
?”

Molly answered for both Maggie and herself. “My father has asked Maggie's mother to marry him. Maggie is opposed.”

Carrie nodded contemplatively. “Well, Maggie, aren't you generally opposed to pretty much
everything
?”

Maggie stopped in her tracks and seized her hips with both hands. “I may be crabby from time to time, Carrie, but at least I don't go through life in an absolute
drowse
the way
you
do.”

Carrie glowered. Then she took a deep breath and announced, “I have just the thing to wake us
all
up. Do either of you have plans for Friday night? Well, of course you don't. Now here it is…”