“How is everything going?” she asked. “I hope the General isn’t saying things he shouldn’t.”
“Oh, no,” I said, “everything’s going very well,” and then I sat beside her on the sofa. “He was telling us how you handed him a bayonet, when the militia took his father’s Ford.”
“Oh,” she said, “that was a silly thing for him to tell.”
She frowned, but her needles still moved steadily. Her hair was blue-gray now, no longer the color of pulled molasses candy.
“I don’t see why Mel should have remembered that,” she said. “Mel and I haven’t spoken about it for years. He always had a stubborn streak, and I was afraid the man was going to strike him, and then I saw that thing lying on top of a pile of knapsacks. Our son Robert has that same stubborn streak. When he was fifteen he looked very much as Mel did.”
“How did he look?” I asked.
“Oh, like any towheaded boy of fifteen,” she said. “He’s taller than Mel and he has his father’s features, but he has my eyes. He’s stubborn but I’m afraid he hasn’t his father’s character. The General has a strong character and he’s difficult when he’s restless. It’s queer he should think of that afternoon at Blair. Of course we never told about the trouble when we got home. That was Mel’s and my secret.” She looked at me and smiled. “I was glad to have some sort of secret with him.”
XIII
Don’t Say You Didn’t Mean It, Mel
It was undoubtedly a washcloth she was crocheting—white with a green border—and she was doing the border now with quick, even plunges of her needle. I could understand as I watched her why mythological fates always seemed to me to be spinning, tatting or embroidering. Mrs. Goodwin would inevitably finish that washcloth. She would not thrust any half-completed work into a bag and forget it as Helen often did. Yet while the washcloth grew and expanded, it was only a methodical accompaniment, because her whole mind did not have to be upon it. A slight relaxation about the corners of her firm, small mouth showed that she enjoyed what she was thinking. She was like someone opening a box of old letters—in order.
“The General was speaking of a Sunday school picnic,” I said. “You all rode somewhere on the trolley.”
Helen had said that she did not know what to talk about with Mrs. Goodwin, yet I was entertained, feeling, at the same time, a sort of military deference because she was a general’s wife. She glanced up at me, but she did not forget the washcloth.
“Are you being polite or are you interested?” she asked.
“If you really want to know,” I told her, “I started by being polite, but I like putting things together. It’s a habit, I suppose.”
“Are you trying to put me together?” she asked.
“Not seriously,” I answered, “only out of habit.”
“You’re not much like Mel, are you?” she said.
“I suppose that’s why I’m interested in him,” I said.
She nodded and I straightened myself uncomfortably, and felt like a younger officer paying a formal call upon the commanding officer’s wife.
“I suppose you think the General’s a type,” she said.
“Why, yes, of course I do,” I answered.
“And I suppose you think I’m a type.”
“Why, yes,” I said, “the idea occurred to me.”
She smiled, and I understood her much better when she smiled.
“I’m glad of that,” she said, “because I’ve always tried to be. So few people outside the service ever try to understand the service. Of course Mel has to be a type, but I wish he enjoyed being one as much as I do.”
“Doesn’t he?” I asked.
“Not when he’s restless,” she said, “and of course he’s restless now.” She smoothed the washcloth on her knee and probed at a stitch with her needle. “The General calls you Sid. Do you mind if I do?”
“Why, no,” I said, “I’d like to have you.”
“If you call him Mel,” she said, “I don’t know why you shouldn’t call me Muriel. How long were you with the General in Paris?”
I was almost sure that Dottie Peale was coming next, and I was thinking of loyalty from the top down and from the bottom up. Helen had said that men always stuck together, and Mrs. Melville Goodwin was crocheting me like her washcloth.
“I only saw him off and on for a day or two,” I said.
I waited for her to twist me further into the design, but the design changed.
“But you saw him at Saint-Lô first, didn’t you?” she said. “That was Mel’s great chance, of course, the sort of chance that everyone in the service dreams about. I wish I’d been there to see him.”
“He looked very well,” I said.
“Mel always appears well when he’s with troops,” she said. “I know what you mean by liking to put things together. I was in Washington before Normandy, sharing a home with a dear friend of mine, Enid Joyce, the wife of Colonel Joyce. We had quarters next to each other at Schofield when Mel was there in ’34. Poor Bud Joyce had a disk in his back and he never had his chance. He was in G–2 in the Pentagon, wearing a brace, and Enid and I would spend off moments in Alexandria working over a five-hundred-piece picture puzzle on the bridge table. After D day, sometimes I used to creep downstairs at two in the morning and turn on the light and look for pieces.”
She paused and smiled at me, but I was on the outside and she was on the inside. We sat there silently. It was a peaceful sort of silence.
“So I see why you like to put things together,” she said. “If Mel and I were a puzzle all cut up by a jigsaw, I suppose that Sunday school picnic out at Rodney’s Grove would be a corner piece.”
She stopped and I was afraid that the balance of things was gone and that she would not get back to Hallowell. I was relieved when she went on.
“It was a very hot day,” she said. “I made enough sandwiches for Mel and myself, but I wasn’t sure that Mel would eat them with me because Mel was always shy with girls, especially in a group … and the night before, I sat up late, reading A Plebe at West Point, with a candle and the shades down so that Mother couldn’t see the light from my bedroom. Did you ever read A Plebe at West Point?”
A Plebe at West Point belonged in a phase through which most boys passed, and my father must have understood this because he had given the book to me for my birthday when we were living in West Newton.
“You see,” she said, “Mel always liked to talk about the Point. It was another of our secrets. There was only one thing that used to bother Mel about going to the Point. It’s queer to think of now. Can you imagine what it was?”
I could not imagine what it was that had bothered him.
“What worried us was that there might never be another war. It is queer to think of now, isn’t it?”
I was afraid that she might lose the thread, so I asked her what chance there had been to talk to Melville Goodwin about the Military Academy at a Sunday school picnic.
“Of course there wasn’t much chance,” she said, “and the Senior Bible Class was pretty old for picnics. We played Bible quotation games with Mr. Atherton while all the others were wading in the pond or swinging or playing hide-and-seek, but the first time Mel ever kissed me was at that picnic. I was half afraid he would and half afraid he wouldn’t, and I kept wondering what I would do if he did.”
There was nothing I could say about that fragile memory, which had traveled all the way from Hallowell. It was not for me or for anyone else to touch. I only remember my surprise that she should ever have revealed it to me, because this was the sort of personal experience that a man would have always kept to himself; but then, women faced reality in a very different way from men and their confessions regarding love were inherently objective. I had never told a living soul of the first time I had kissed a girl and never would—but Mrs. Goodwin’s needle was moving again and I could almost smell the sweet scent of pine needles in the August sun of the picnic grove.
“Mel was always slow
with girls, compared with other boys at school,” she said. “He was awfully slow at hay rides and Halloween. Did you ever play that game at a Halloween party with a long thread and a raisin in the middle of the thread? When Mel played that game he would always chew up to the raisin and get it while the girl was still feet away. I thought those games were silly myself, and sometimes I wished … but it doesn’t make much difference—all the things I used to wish. It takes a long while to learn that you can’t have everything.”
“A lot of people never learn it,” I said, “maybe no one does.”
“That may be true with civilians,” she said, “but I don’t think it’s true with service people. You learn pretty quickly in the service that you can never get anything unless you give up something else.”
Anyone could see that she had given up everything, including all her might-have-beens, to follow General Goodwin.
Melville had once told her, she said, that he had to wear long trousers to the picnic because all the other boys in the Bible Class would be wearing them, but Melville was in a transient stage, and he only owned two pairs of long trousers. One was his pair of khaki work pants, and if he had worn them the other boys would have started singing “Reuben, Reuben, I’ve been thinking …” His only others went with a suit of blue serge handed down from his brother Harry, which had been altered by Kunik’s Tailor Shop in Nashua for one dollar and seventy-five cents out of Melville’s own savings. The suit was too heavy for a hot August day, but if he removed the coat, everyone would see how his shirt, also inherited from Harry, kept billowing around the middle, and everyone would observe the tucks his mother had made to shorten the sleeves and the way the neckband was folded here and there to accommodate the celluloid collar that was too small for it. The coat, when buttoned, concealed these defects completely, particularly when Melville had snapped a ready-made bow tie under the collar. Melville’s hair had been cut for the occasion at Bedard’s Barber Shop on the square—bushy on top but shaved in a neat geometric arc at the neck. He did not wear a hat because he had no summer hat, but he looked very neat and nice, Muriel thought, as they climbed onto the open trolley up front with the rest of the Bible Class.
When Mr. Atherton suggested that the boys who were wearing coats might take them off, Melville said he did not feel hot at all, that you only got hot when you exercised, and riding in a trolley was not exercise. He made this last remark to Muriel and not to Mr. Atherton. He was very polite and he carried her picnic basket and helped her on and off the car. As a matter of fact, all the boys in the Bible Class were constrained to be polite, and there was very little hair pulling or whistling up front in the trolley where Mr. Atherton was seated. Muriel was glad of this because she was wearing her best embroidered shirtwaist with some real lace sewed down the front, and her hair was pinned insecurely into a loose knot, which Melville had said he liked. If there had been hair pulling, the whole thing might have come to pieces. It might have been more fun without Mr. Atherton, in some ways, but she was glad he was around because there were none of those songs using real names like “Melville and Muriel going for a ride, and Melville said to Muriel, ‘Won’t you be my bride?’”
Melville offered her a stick of Beeman’s gum from a pack which he had purchased at his father’s drugstore. She said she might like some later but not in the trolley car, and she hoped that the boys would not begin throwing wads of gum at the girls’ heads. When some boy blew one of those round mouth whistles loudly in Melville’s ear, Melville did not even bother to turn around, and when the boys started a game of One Old Cat in the grove, Melville did not play because he said that he had lamed his shoulder. Of course he had to leave her when all the other boys left the girls, but he came back when Mr. Atherton suggested that they all sing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Although Melville said that he was not hot at all with his coat on, there were beads of perspiration on his forehead, and undoubtedly his collar would have wilted if it had not been celluloid. When she found that he had forgotten to bring a handkerchief, she offered to lend him hers, and told him to use it when no one was looking. It was nice to have Melville sit next to her—but there was no chance to have a private conversation.
It may have been that Mr. Atherton, from previous experience, was against private conversations among the older group. On earlier picnics when she was too young to be interested, search parties headed by Mr. Atherton had been obliged to run through the woods calling for lost couples, and once the trolley car had waited for half an hour overtime before the picnic was intact. At any rate Mr. Atherton thought of a long succession of games and songs in which everyone was obliged to join, and there was not a single lull until about a half an hour before the scheduled time for departure. Then Mr. Atherton had to stop in order to see that the younger children were present and accounted for, and at this point Melville suddenly suggested to her that they take a walk on the path around the pond. She told him that it would be very hot walking, but Melville said the path was in the shade and it was cool beside the water. She said there would not be time, because the trolley was leaving in half an hour and she was afraid Mr. Atherton might not like it. Melville said if that was the way she felt about just going down to the pond, she could stay right where she was and that he was going by himself. Then she said that she would go, too, as long as he wanted to go so much, but that it was awfully hot.
The walk hardly seemed worth while, once they had started, because neither of them had anything to say. She did tell him that she had read A Plebe at West Point, and he had answered that it was just a kid’s book. After that they said nothing until they were a quarter of the way around the pond, when she said they really ought to be getting back or else people would begin calling for them. They stopped under a maple tree near the water’s edge, and there was a little patch of lily pads and one white pond lily on the water a few feet offshore. She remembered the silvery look of the sunlight on the lily pads and she remembered saying that she wished he could get that water lily for her. Melville tried to reach it with a stick, and then she pulled him back because she saw he could not reach it without getting wet.
“I just said I wished you’d get it for me,” she said. “I didn’t say I wanted it. I can wish without wanting, can’t I?”
“I don’t see what’s the use in wishing for something without wanting it,” he said.
Perhaps that was the difference between girls and boys. Perhaps boys always wanted what they wished for more than girls.
“Muriel,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, “what is it, Melville?”
“Oh, nothing, I guess,” he said.
Then before she knew that anything was going to happen, he bent down and kissed her cheek. She was startled because she had not thought of such a thing happening and the kiss made her jump just as though it were a sudden noise and not a kiss.
“Muriel,” he began, “I didn’t mean to …” and he looked very confused and hot. “I’m sorry, Muriel.”
“We’ve really got to go back now,” she said, “or else people will start calling … but don’t say you didn’t mean to.”
They walked back down the path without either of them saying another word and without either looking at the other, but there was nothing awkward about the silence.
Mrs. Goodwin smoothed the washcloth on her knee, examining the stitches. It was as compact and complete as that small moment, but the sunlight on the lily pads was gone.
“Well, that’s three of them finished,” she said.
An illusion of having been present at a time and place in which I did not belong was so strong that I gave a start when I heard a footstep and saw the General crossing the living room.
“Well, well,” the General said, “have I interrupted something?”
His voice was heavily playful, and he smiled at us, but at the same time he gave me a sharp questioning look. He was no longer in a celluloid collar, and his hair was no longer yellow. He had traveled a long way since the Bible Class. His rou
gh edges were worn smooth and his uniform was not a hand-me-down, but a part of the young Melville Goodwin was there still.
“We were talking about kissing, Mel,” Mrs. Goodwin said.
The General laughed, and I found myself laughing dutifully with him.
“Well, well, it’s about time I broke off and came in here,” he said, “if you’ve got right down to kissing.”
“I wouldn’t say we were right down to it, sir,” I said, and the General laughed again.
“How’s everything going, dear?” Mrs. Goodwin asked.
“Well, frankly, you’d be surprised,” the General said. “It’s the first time I’ve been able to get in a word edgewise in about twenty years.”
We all three laughed conventionally.
Husbands and wives always revealed more than they thought they did. You could usually perceive the grooves of habit and the old methods of give-and-take and you could catch them picking up all sorts of things, just where they had left them off.
“How far are you along with it, dear?” Mrs. Goodwin asked.
“Well, frankly,” the General said, “that magazine fellow ought to be in the Inspector General’s office. I’ve only got to where I’m taking exams for the Point.”
“Oh dear,” Mrs. Goodwin said, “can’t you get on faster, Melville?”
“It’s funny, they don’t seem to want me to get on faster,” the General said. “I can dish it out if they want to take it, Muriel.”
“I hope they’re not making a fool of you, Mel,” Mrs. Goodwin said.
“You’d be surprised, Muriel,” General Goodwin said, and he frowned.
“The General’s doing very well,” I said. “You don’t have to be worried. If Phil Bentley likes someone, he’s always this way. He wants the full strategic background.”
Melville Goodwin nodded, and his mouth and eyes took on the official expression of an alert officer receiving and weighing intelligence.
“I don’t understand writers,” he said. “As I think of my career, it’s like a doctor’s or a lawyer’s. It doesn’t make good copy, or a news story, or whatever you fellows call it. There’s nothing in me that fellow Bentley can jazz up. I’m not a character like George Patton.”
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