by Mary Astor
His head felt as if it was going to swivel off as he looked at everything on the way up to the house. And the odor. It wasn’t just the smell of water, like the sweet vegetable smell of the falls and the ponds, it was sharp and unchanging. It assaulted the inside of his nose, and as he breathed it in and it went down his throat, he felt queer, like he wanted to cry or something. He knew that the look of something could do that—like when the pines at home were still, just before a big storm, and you could watch the lightning flickering between them, or sometimes the color of a mackerel sky, reddened by the sunset. But here was just the smell of the sea, and it was so disturbing that he didn’t realize they were turning into his father’s house. He had visualized the moment for so long, pored over snapshots of the place, wondered and wondered. And now here it was and the sickness in his stomach began again. He had been told that his father wouldn’t be there for a few days, yet. He was still in Mexico City on business, where he’d been all winter, and he felt glad in a way, because it meant that he would get over his first shyness and get acquainted with the others and be more relaxed when he met him He didn’t want to behave like a fool kid right off.
“Welcome home, John,” said Gregg.
“Is that it?” said the boy, pointing to the sea.
“That’s it. It’s just for looking and hearing though, for a while, I’m afraid—you’d freeze if you went in swimming for another month, anyway.”
“You ever been in a forest pond? Some of the guys and me go in as soon as the ice melts just to the edges. Of course nobody’s fool enough to stay for—— Who’s that?” he finished on a whisper. “That’s not Aunt——”
“No, no, that’s our good housekeeper, Doreen Archer. She’s nice, but a little boring. She likes to talk about her daughter, who’s a trained nurse for babies——”
“A what?”
“Doreen, this is John, will you take his bag up to Mr. Charles’s room, please?”
“How do you do, John. That I will, sir, Mr. Gregg. It’s nice and fresh and clean for the young man. And you just come around to the kitchen any time you want to, John. It’s nice to have someone in the house who will like fresh-baked cookies again!”
“Gosh, thanks—uh, Doreen!”
Doreen turned her crinkled moonface to Gregg. “The livin’ image!” and her several chins wobbled as she shook her head unhappily.
As he lay in the darkness in his father’s four-poster bed, John fought off the desire to sleep. He was very tired from the trip and the excitement and the newness of everything; but now that he was alone, he wanted to go over things, to sort them out in his mind, before sleep caught up with him. He was surprised by a wave of homesickness, since for nearly a year, it seemed, he had hated Clarke Falls more than ever, and everything and everyone in it. There had been a great relief when Grand-mère told him that in the spring he would go to his father’s home. The problem of running away had always been a knotty one; and it seemed as if Grand-mère must have been reading his mind—she always seemed to be able to do that, and—well, here he was! The last few weeks he’d almost been able to be nice to M’ma. Not that she was any help; she never talked to him any more than usual. Always that dumb-cow look of hers. Whenever she did look at him—she seemed to look through him, and then beyond him as though over his shoulder was somebody else. Often he actually looked behind him to see, but of course there wasn’t anybody. It was just a way she had. He guessed she’d taken good care of him. He remembered times when he’d been sick or feverish and he felt the comfort of her firm breast and shoulder. And it was she who always came up to his room and saw that he was covered, and all that stuff. But there was a wall he couldn’t break through. She wouldn’t talk to him. He had given up long ago even trying to be mischievous and teasing with M’ma, because it didn’t bother her. She’d just turn her back on him and go someplace else.
There was an ache in his heart at leaving his airedale, Corky, whom he’d raised from a puppy, and he didn’t know when he’d be seeing him again. The Carewes’ dog, Smitty, was okay, but she was fat and a female and not very friendly.
Of course he knew this was a trial trip. Grand-mère had warned him, “It is up to you, entirely—you will have to be attentive and learn their ways, and do things as they wish. They will have the responsibility of caring for you as your father is a very busy man, and so you must be obedient to them—otherwise, you will come back here.”
He could see it wasn’t going to be as scary a job as he had thought. Of course he had never been inside such a big house in his life. In contrast to Clarke Falls, the places people lived in seemed bigger and their outdoors smaller. Except for the sea, of course—the wonderful sea. He listened a minute to its low rumble-rumble-crash—and then silence, and then rumble-rumble-crash again.
Everybody was so nice to him. At first he felt stiff with the effort of not bumping into things, afraid to touch the beautiful cloth on the chairs; the rugs seemed soft and unstable, and he had to hold himself in to keep from his habit of running instead of walking. Gregg and Aunt Virginia had taken him for a tour, but just where different rooms were located was still a little mixed up in his mind. The best room of all was Gregg’s at the top of the stairs. He’d never seen so many books—and all jumbled up and lying around like they’d been read a lot—not like the downstairs library where Grandfather’s books were in perfect rows and bound with beautiful leather. Gregg said they would work together up there in his room. He told him that the schools here in the East were pretty tough, and that they’d probably have to do some catching up so that when he went in next fall he wouldn’t have any trouble. It was funny when Gregg said, “You like Homer?” when he pulled out a familiar copy of a translation of the Iliad. It had been one of a “set” of books in the small library in the principal’s office at Clarke Falls, and he’d borrowed it for a time. “Who doesn’t?” he’d replied, although he knew he was showing off a little at Gregg’s obvious approval. Then they’d talked about the textbooks he’d used in school and Gregg quizzed him a little on math and then said, “H’m. Backwoods school, indeed. We’ll show ’em, kid!” And he’d felt just wonderful. And Aunt Virginia had laughed and hugged him, and said, “You seem to be the answer to a teacher’s dream. The truly docile student.” He’d frowned a little at the word. It sounded sort of sweet and sappy, but Gregg, seeing what he was thinking—he guessed he had kind of made a face—flipped over the pages of a big dictionary, and showed him where the word meant “able to be taught,” and then he understood.
It was hard to find out just when he would see his father. There were boxes and boxes of presents from him—clothes and a tennis racket, and airplane model kits and a beautiful bike with everything on it—boy! He could hardly wait till tomorrow when he could look at it all over again. They said it was “hard to tell.” Apparently he had arrived in New York, and he’d written them that he could hardly wait to see his son and that he’d be up to Nelson, just as soon as he could get away. John tried not to ask too many questions; it was rude, he knew. Especially because about a year ago he had finally come to understand the circumstances of his birth—from Grand-mère: that his father and mother had made a hasty marriage and found out that they were not right for each other very quickly. He could sure understand that. His mother was certainly not pretty—fat and heavy-footed, and that glum expression on her face all the time. He bet his father was a real lively person and how anybody who looked like he did in his pictures could fall in love with M’ma was more then he’d ever understand. And one thing, certain, he would never understand, and never forgive his mother—or Grand-mère for that matter—for never having told his father about himself. That was too much. Of course his father had married again—why wouldn’t he? It was too bad his wife had died in that accident, but secretly he was glad when Aunt Virginia told him there weren’t any other children. His father was his, now—all his! And they’d get over any strangeness at not knowing each other, and be real friends, and it was all going to be like
a dream that comes out all right.
He was awake at sunrise, and sitting up straight; there was only a fraction of a moment of unfamiliarity, because his dreams had been full of all the things that had happened to him—it was like waking up on Christmas Day. You’d never forgotten during the night that it was going to be Christmas. You just woke up and said, “Hurray!” Somebody must have been in during the night, for his door was half open. He knew he’d shut it last night, because he liked doors to be shut. Whenever his mother came in and covered him, she always went out and left the door ajar, and then he would have to throw the covers off and go and slam it shut in irritation. He cocked his head in a listening attitude, for there was a jingling sound coming down the hall, and then he held his hand over his mouth to keep from laughing out loud in delight, for around the edge of the door appeared a pointed nose and black shoe-button eyes looking at him in a very startled manner.
“Come here, boy; hyuh, boy,” he whispered, and the small black dachshund puppy yipped in a vigorous whisper, bouncing over to the bed and, placing two forepaws on the edge, begged to be taken up.
John hugged him and scratched the velvet ears, and found the tag hanging from a chain on his neck.
“What’s your name, fellow, huh—what’s your name? Hold still, what’s this say—’D—E—I—N—O—S’ Dynuss?” The dog wagged his tail vigorously and licked his face. “Deenuss?” Again the tail beat ecstatically. “Well, no matter, it’s a pretty fancy name, Deany, old boy.” The dog yelped and John shushed him, tumbling out of the bed. Pawing through the closet, he found his dark blue jeans hanging neatly on a pants hanger, alongside his new clothes. And in one of the drawers he found his red turtle-neck pullover. They would do for now, he thought, and somebody would tell him what he should wear later. Cautiously the boy walked down the hall, with Deimos running ahead and down the stairs, delirious with the fun of having a playmate.
The house stunned him with awe, even at this second look, but he postponed the examination of every inch of it.
The air was brisk and chilly, but there was already a warm caress from the sun, which had cleared the low streak of purple clouds on the horizon.
Deimos galloped around him and he yielded and together they had a soul-lifting run down the beach. They found shells, and played with ropes of seaweed. They dug for the little sand crabs that burrowed deeper—they piled up mounds of damp sand, and John tasted his sandy fingers, thinking, “It’s not exactly salty, it’s like something that’s so salty that it isn’t——”
And then he heard the sound of a bell clanging in a twangy dingdong, and looked toward the house to see Aunt Virginia waving him to come in. He ran up the beach to the low wall, taking it in a jump as though it were three feet high, the dog scrambling and panting after him.
“Well, good morning, John. You’re an early bird! I see you and Deinos have met.”
“Good morning, Aunt Virginia. Yeah, is that the way you pronounce his name? He’s a wonderful dog. Does he belong to my father?”
Virginia put an arm around his shoulder. “Well, he’s just one of a long line of dachsies—we’ve always had one or two around as long as I can remember. This fellow’s a bit of a wanderer; if you like, you can call him yours, and feed him and take care of him. Maybe with you around he won’t run away all the time.”
“Oh boy! Can I? Really?”
She steered him to the washroom in the front hall, where he kept up a running conversation with her while he washed the sand from his fists, and Virginia smiled and shook her head in the effort to clear it of a mirage: herself at the same age and her brother, pushing and shoving and laughing over this same washbowl, washing up for breakfast in the sunroom.
He was relieved at the informality at breakfast. Gregg was also in dark jeans and a dark blue pullover, even Virginia’s plain green wool dress was simple enough. Only Grandmother looked like something out of a storybook. She was all laces and ruffles and her white hair was piled high with a comb in the back, and she took his hand as he came into the room, and pulled him to have him kiss her cheek. He felt tight with shyness all of a sudden, but mumbled as well as he could, “Good morning, Grand-mère—uh—I mean Grandmother, I hope you slept well last night.” She seemed even older than Grand-mère, who was his great-grandmother. She was like tissue paper, and her skin felt dry and soft like a bird’s wing.
But everybody smiled and talked and made him feel comfortable. Grandfather heaped his plate with sausage and eggs, laughing and saying, “I know boys of your age are always hungry, you’ll find this sea air will make you even hungrier!”
He sneaked a bit of sausage to Deinos and Smitty, who were looking at him longingly beside his chair, and then looked at Gregg. “Is it all right? To give them nibbles?”
Gregg said, “We make firm rules about never feeding the dogs in the house, and then everybody breaks them, because nobody lives who can resist a dachshund’s desperate eyes!”
John laughed and said, “What does the puppy’s name mean? It looks Latin to me—or Greek.”
“Does it now?” said Gregg, raising an eyebrow. “Oh, forgive me, I forgot you’re a student of Homer. Well, it’s Greek and it means ‘terrible.’ ”
“ ‘Terrible’!” exclaimed John. “Why’d you call him ‘Terrible’?”
“Just because he isn’t. It’s a trope, an antiphrasis, which is Greek for a word meaning the opposite of what you really mean.”
“How, Gregg?”
“Well, suppose you did something stupid—real stupid—and I said, ‘That was clever!’ You’d know what I meant, wouldn’t you?”
“Sure, I get it now, like ‘irony’.”
“Not quite, John.”
Walter groaned and turned to the others. “Always the schoolmaster! Virginia, let’s talk about the weather, shall we—and give me some marmalade, please.”
But John’s eyes were waiting for an answer. Gregg thought, “How like, and how different!” Never had Charlie looked at him like that. Charlie’s eyes had always been flat and vague. But these, with the same color and faintly uptilted shape, bored into him with a thousand questions. With a happy sigh he started, “Well, you see, John, irony is more a tone of voice . . .”
Presently John said, “Are you going to teach me Greek and Latin later on?”
Virginia said, “Is that you, purring, Gregg? I can hear it clear over here!”
Gregg smiled. “That’s right, Virginia—now the pitcher is really full!” He turned back to John. “Tell you what. I’ll teach you Greek, so that you can read your Iliad and Odyssey in the original, if you will correct my French idiom and accent. It will take us both about an equal length of time, I should think.”
John blushed. “Oh, I didn’t mean anything when I said you had a funny accent—it’s just that it sounds like it’s coming out of a book.” And everybody laughed and Deinos barked and John said, “You know, I feel terrible—that’s a trope, son!” and grinned, and thought he’d never been so happy in his whole life.
Within two weeks, John felt that he’d lived there all his life, and Clarke Falls slipped into the background of his mind like a memory of the cradle. His own room, still smelling of paint and new linoleum, was thrillingly his own domain. It was on the third floor, beyond the stair well on the northeast side. Empty for many years, since Doreen and Kitty and the gardener had fine quarters over the garage, the old, boxlike servants’ rooms, three of them, had been made into one room and a new bath. What pleased him most was that Grandfather and the others had actually prepared for him, as though they expected him to be part of the family; oh, he’d be spending some time back at home, but there were no dire threats of “being sent back if you don’t behave,” as Grand-mère had implied.
There were bright Hudson’s Bay blanket rugs on the linoleum, sailcloth hung at the windows, and the big bouncy bed was covered with tan corduroy; there were shelves and closets and a real workbench at one end of the room where he could build his airplane models. There was litt
le furniture, giving a boy a chance to breathe and move freely. The low window sills asked for elbows to lean and dream at glimpses of the meadow and the river through the near top branches of an elm. And on the east the view of the Point and the sea and Deinos chasing sea gulls, which was the best of all. And all of it seemed to John just to be waiting for the day when his father would arrive. He asked questions of everyone, direct and indirect, but nobody would come to the point.
Kitty said, “I have never met Mr. Charles, I’ve only been with the family for six months.” Doreen said, “When I was young, like Kitty here, Cook used to always make two batches of cookies—one for your father to think he was swiping from, and the other to keep ‘on hand.’ ” Grandmother was no help at all. She had long stories about his father when he was a “darling little boy,” and how he used to sit on her lap while she told him stories. He kept from squirming in boredom, because his father as a little boy was just not interesting to him.
Mr. Simmons, the gardener, was no better. John made himself useful and helped Simmons with the wheelbarrow, hauling away cuttings and weeds, hoping for just one beaming look that said, “Your father? A fine man!” but instead Simmons confined himself to grumbling. “Time was, we had two other part-time fellers around. Place was kept shipshape, you might say. Nobody cares much n’more. Missus used to like to fool around with bulbs, and now the Mister, he says, ‘Don’t fuss.’ I do m’best, but can’t keep it shipshape. Ay-uh, I do m’best.”