Jannie said excitedly, “Just like Beverley Lee and it turned out it was the caretaker all the time.”
“Look, look,” Laurie said, pointing. I had the door of the linen closet open and I reached up onto the towel shelf and took down Jannie’s Easter-egg hat.
“What?” I said, surprised.
“That’s my hat,” Jannie said.
“Why would I want to put your hat in the linen closet?” I demanded. “Don’t be silly.”
“My nice pink Easter-egg hat,” Jannie said, pleased.
“Craazy,” Laurie remarked. “Opens the closet and there’s the hat. Craazy.” He pushed past me and began to paw through the towels.
“Ridiculous,” I said. “I never put hats in linen closets. Linen closets are where I keep towels and sheets and extra blankets, not hats.”
“Not sneakers, either.” Laurie stood back and dusted his hands.
“You pick up every one of those towels,” I said, annoyed. “And then you and your sister can get right in there and clean up that bathroom. And the next time I find that pink hat lying around I am going to burn it. And you can tell Beverley Lee Girl Detective—”
“Any luck?” my husband called from the foot of the stairs.
“Certainly not.” I started down. “Of all the idiotic notions and now it’s too late in the year anyway for a little hat like that.”
“Sneaker sneaker sneaker!” It was Sally and Barry, in glory. Laurie raced past me down the stairs. “Got it? Sal,” he yelled, “you got it?”
Proudly the little procession wound around to the front hall. Sally was still scattering sand but Barry was bearing the sneaker on high. “Gee,” Laurie said. “Hey, kids, thanks. Where was it?”
“Under your bed,” Sally said. “We did a lot of—” she glanced at her father “—blagic,” she said. “And then we went up and looked. Very good, Barry.”
“Very good, Sally,” Barry said.
“Gosh.” Laurie was pleased. He turned and gave me an affectionate pat on the head. “Boy,” he said, “are you ever a tippy old lady.” Then, in a burst of gratitude, he added, “I’m going to go down right now on my bike and get you kids each a popsicle.”
“Well, me, too, I should think,” Jannie said indignantly. “After all, it was me thought of reconstructing the crime, and in Elsie Dinsmore when Elsie—”
“What is this crime talk?” I said. “Anyone would think that instead of spending all my time picking up and putting away—”
“The sneaker,” Laurie said to me, gesturing. “The other sneaker. I got to get down and get those popsicles, so let’s have it.”
“What?” I said.
“The sneaker, dear. The one you just had upstairs, for heaven’s sake.”
Uncomfortably I looked down at my empty hands. “Now let’s see,” I said. “I had it just a minute ago. . . .”
• • •
I was sitting at the kitchen table grating potatoes for potato pancakes and was thus a wholly captive audience when Jannie came in from school with her arithmetic and spelling books, and, of course, Little Women. She put the books down, hung up her jacket and hat, took an apple, and sat down at the table across from me. “I been meaning to ask you for a long time,” she said. “Suppose I wanted to write a book. Where would I begin?”
“At the beginning,” I said smartly; I had just grated my knuckle.
“I wish Laurie and Barry were girls,” she said.
“Why on earth?”
“And Sally’s name was Beth.”
“Why put the whammy on Sally? Why don’t you be Beth?”
“I’m Jo.”
“And Laurie is Meg? And poor Barry has to be Amy?”
“If they were only girls.”
“And does that make me Marmee? Or can I be the old cook?”
“Hannah? When I write my book—”
“I’d rather be crazy old Aunt March, come to think of it. Who do you like for Professor Bhaer?”
Jannie turned pink. “I didn’t really think about that yet,” she said.
Charitably, I changed the subject. “Don’t you have any homework to do?” I asked.
She sighed. “I got to write a book report,” she said. “That’s why I’d like to write a book, so then I could write a book report on that, and save all that time.”
“I see.” Resolutely I took up the first onion and began to grate. “What I always wondered,” Jannie went on, “was when they went on the picnic in the book and they played Authors. Because in my game of Authors there’s Louisa May Alcott and she wrote Little Women.” She looked at me inquiringly and I smiled bravely, tears running down my cheeks. “Well,” she said, “in her own book did they play Authors with their own book on the cards? And if Louisa May Alcott had to do a book report for school then could she—”
“I see what you mean,” I said, weeping.
She laughed. “You’re crying like a fish,” she said. “Now, what I wondered, if Louisa May Alcott wrote a book. Because she had to write that book because it was already on the Authors cards, you see? And Eight Cousins and Rose in Bloom and Little Men.”
I sniffled. “Jo’s Boys,” I said. “Don’t forget Jo’s Boys.”
“But if they were already playing Authors in the book how did they know she was going to finish it? Because suppose she got halfway and she didn’t like it and threw it away how could they play Authors in the book with Little Women on the Authors card? Or if she changed her mind and decided to call it—”
“Suppose,” I said, “she decided to have them play pinochle? Then she wouldn’t have to write any books.”
“But she would have to write one book anyway because otherwise she couldn’t be in the Authors game.”
I got up and went to the sink to rinse out the grater. “But if she weren’t in the Authors game—” I began and then stopped myself, shaking my head violently.
Jannie giggled. “I suppose you did read the book?” she asked.
“I did.”
“Then who,” Jannie asked triumphantly, “said, ‘That boy is a perfect Cyclops, isn’t he’? ”
“Amy,” I said. “Who said, ‘I never enjoyed housekeeping, and I’m going to take a vacation today’?”
“Marmee, but she didn’t mean it. Who said, ‘Birds in their little nests agree’?”
“Beth, on the first page.” I took down the flour. “Who said, ‘You can never get too much salt in potato pancakes’?”
“Who?”
“Your grandmother. Now go and write your book.”
• • •
My husband is always making little remarks about money. Sometimes he says that it doesn’t grow on trees, and sometimes he says that I must think he is made of it. When he buys a Greek drachma he says that we can’t take it with us, and when I take the children to get shoes for school he says in a kind of high voice that there isn’t enough of it in the world for this family. I once passed the door to the dining room when he and several friends were playing poker and I heard him laughing and saying it was a shame to take it away like this. When he pays the children their allowances he says that it is a great responsibility, and whenever any of us asks him for some he says he can’t afford it. However, although the discussion of money in general is a constant and urgent theme in our family, I do not think I ever heard my husband say so many different things about money as he did when the man came from the income tax department. As a matter of fact, during the twenty-odd hours between the telephone call and the man’s departure I do not think my husband spent more than a second or two reflecting on any other subject.
He was not pleased with the telephone call. It was a Wednesday evening, and our family was assembled at dinner. It was the kind of dinner I think of as a Wednesday evening dinner, because on Wednesday I always begin to think of economizing so we can have dinner on Thu
rsday and Friday. As a result—although it hardly mattered, anyway, since my husband never did eat any dinner that night—we were having Monday night’s meat loaf warmed over. Laurie had seized control of the conversation as we sat down, and I was trying to serve the meat loaf and gesture to Jannie to put her napkin in her lap and gesture to Sally to take her napkin ring out of her lap and gesture to Barry that he would not be served any meat loaf unless he put away his space gun and sat in his chair correctly and at the same time I was trying to ask my husband if he wanted noodles.
“Isn’t it?” Laurie demanded of the table at large. “Because suppose I did and then no one but me danced with her, what could I do?”
“Certainly,” his father said.
“Noodles?”
“Besides,” Laurie said, waving his fork, “you figure it’s forty cents if I go stag, and sixty cents I take a girl—I don’t know any girls worth twenty cents. And I’d have to dance with her, maybe every dance except if she wanted to sit down or something.”
He stopped for breath, and I opened my mouth, but Jannie said, “But if no one took any girls there wouldn’t be any girls there and who would you dance with at all?”
“There’s always girls there,” Laurie said drearily. “And Mrs. Williams always coming up and saying whyn’t you go ask that nice girl over there if she wants to dance. Yeah.”
“Elbows off the table,” I said.
“Why go at all?” his father asked. “Why not stay home and save forty cents?”
Laurie sighed impatiently. “Because I already save twenty cents by not taking a girl, and I need the money. Anyway, they match pennies in the cloakroom.”
His father frowned. “Young man,” he said, “I will not have you gambling. Other people’s money—”
The phone rang. “Stop her!” Laurie yelled, and I made a fast grab, but Sally had gotten away in a nice running start and was out in the hall before anyone else could move. Sally can move with unbelievable speed from a sitting position, and also she is the only one in the family except Barry, who is slow, who can fit under the telephone table.
“Hello?” she said in her sweet clear voice, and Laurie sighed irritably. “It’s a wonder anyone bothers to call here any more at all,” he said. “Rob tried to call me all day yesterday and Sally answered every time.”
“Well, whose daddy did you want to speak to?” Sally asked.
My husband looked up, alarmed.
“How do you know it’s my daddy you want to speak to if you don’t know my name?” Sally asked shrewdly.
I got up and followed my husband out to the hall. Sally, eying us, retreated still farther under the telephone table and sat hunched up around the phone. “Because if he doesn’t want to talk to you I have to say he’s taking a shower,” she explained.
“Sally,” I said, “give me that phone.”
“Do you have a little girl six years old named Sally?” Sally asked into the phone.
“Sarah,” said her father.
She poked her head out and looked up innocently. “Will I say you’re taking a shower?” she asked. “It’s just some man who hasn’t got any children.”
My husband started to speak, checked himself, and held out his hand. Unwillingly Sally put the phone into it and crawled out between his legs. “No one ever telephones me,” she said sadly.
“Hello?” my husband said into the phone. I took Sally by the wrist and led her back to the table and sat her down firmly. “No dessert,” I said, and she snarled. “Stop it,” I said, and she giggled.
“Fifteen cents?” Jannie said to Laurie.
“Half a buck?” Laurie countered.
“Twenty cents?”
“Forty?”
“What?” I said.
“If Laurie clears the table tonight and scrapes the dishes and stacks them,” Jannie asked me, “is it worth any more than fifteen cents if I pay him from my allowance?”
“That’s a lot of dishes,” Laurie said. He poked scornfully at his butter plate. “Look at all this stuff,” he said. “Thirty cents.”
“If you practice my piano lesson for me I could make it twenty-five,” Jannie said.
My husband came back to the table. He sat down in his chair and stared straight ahead of him. The children looked at him curiously, and then Jannie said, “Every time we let Dad talk on the phone something happens. Remember when it was the man about the dogs stealing deer hides?”
“Or the library with the books overdue,” Laurie said.
“Or that lady,” Jannie said, “the one who keeps calling to find out if the phone is working all right and Dad never knows.”
“Or girls for Laurie,” Sally said.
Laurie turned to look at her balefully. “Yeah?” he said. “Yeah?”
“At least,” my husband said to me suddenly, “we still have the children. Our dear children, and a roof over our heads.” He thought. “I hope,” he said.
“You always worry about every little thing,” I said. “The man told us clearly that the roof would last through this winter and maybe even on into spring.”
“Trusting little creatures,” my husband said, reaching one hand out toward Sally, who looked as though she might bite it. “An affectionate family, a warm hearth, a scrap of bread on the table—a man needs little more than that.”
“I don’t know,” I said to Laurie, who was making faces of astonishment at me. “Yes, dear?” I said to my husband. “Go on.”
“I want you all to be brave,” my husband said, looking around the table at us. “When misfortune strikes, a family must face the world together.”
“Twenty cents?” Laurie whispered across at Jannie.
“Son,” his father said, “I am afraid that your dancing days are over. All allowances will very likely be cut, if not withdrawn altogether. There will be no color television set this year. Your mother will stop squandering all that money every week and learn to make simple nourishing meals out of rice and perhaps oatmeal. On gala days we will share an egg. Laurie can perhaps take a newspaper route—”
“Jannie can support us with her needle, as far as that goes,” I said.
“Where are you going to be?” Laurie asked. “In jail?”
His father turned pale. “Please don’t talk like that,” he said.
“You might as well tell us,” I said. “So we can start facing the world together. Who was on the phone?”
My husband sighed. “The Department of Internal Revenue,” he said. “A question has arisen about our income tax returns. The man will be here in the morning. I am to be ready with my books.”
“Well, that doesn’t seem very bad,” I said. “It seems silly for them to check up on you, but of course you just have to tell them . . .” I looked at my husband and stopped talking abruptly.
“We learned in Social Studies class how to make out an income tax return,” Laurie said. “After dinner I’ll be glad to help you, Dad.”
“I’ve already made out our return, thank you,” my husband said. “That’s why the man is coming. And I don’t think I want any dinner, thank you.” He got up and went into the study.
“Gosh,” Laurie said. “What’s he so bothered about, anyway?”
Sally nodded wisely. “That man on the phone sounded pretty mad,” she said.
I saw the children through their dinner and then took my husband’s coffee into the study. He was walking around and around in a little circle, carrying his checkbook. “Look,” I said, “I just can’t see what you’re so worried about. Here’s your coffee. Why, that man probably checks income tax returns all the time, it’s his job. Are you going to get all upset just because he’s coming here to ask a question or two?”
“Yes, indeed,” my husband said.
“But we’re honest citizens, aren’t we? We’re law-abiding, we pay our taxes—”
; “Yes, indeed,” my husband said.
“Well, then,” I said, “all you have to do is tell this fellow that there’s nothing to check over, all your deductions are in order, and everything will be—”
“Yes, indeed,” my husband said.
“Well,” I said helplessly, “I just don’t see what you’re so worried about.”
“Don’t you?” said my husband.
I stopped following him around with the cup of coffee and sat down instead. He turned suddenly and looked at me. “When you drive the car into town, what do you think about?” he asked me.
“What?”
“When you drive the car into town, what do you think about?”
“Money,” I said. “Whether I have enough, or maybe even a little bit extra so I can maybe buy myself something. Shoes, maybe. I could certainly use a pair of shoes.”
“I took off a lot for business expenses for the car,” my husband said. He turned and waved the checkbook at me. “From now on,” he said, “you don’t ever drive that car into town, see, unless it’s on business.”
“What possible business could I have—”
“I don’t care what you do when you’re there, just so when you’re driving the car into town you have in mind some business expense you’re doing it for. Typewriter ribbons, maybe. If you went all the way into town to get typewriter ribbons, that would be going on business, see? Because I use a typewriter ribbon in my typewriter. And then once you got there for a typewriter ribbon, then you could do any fool shopping you wanted, and it would be a business trip anyway. See?”
“Not really,” I said. “If I buy a typewriter ribbon for you every time I go into town then pretty soon you’d have more typewriter ribbons than—”
“You don’t really have to buy one,” my husband said impatiently. “You just think about buying it on the way into town. As though you were really only driving into town just to get a typewriter ribbon and planned on kind of sneaking off to do your other shopping, but it was really just a trip to get a typewriter ribbon, a business trip. See?”
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