Lucinda's Solution

by Nancy Roman

  “Yes. Just like that.”

  “What are you going to do with her picture? You can put it on the top of the wardrobe where Mama’s picture is.”

  I kissed the top of his head. “No, that spot is for your Mama. I will hang this picture, and that one too, of Mr. Upton Sinclair, by the settee in the parlor. That way when I go to sleep at night I will be able to see their faces and think about how many people they helped. And that will make me feel very good.”

  Jonathan picked up the note from my mother. “What does this say?”

  “It’s from Grandmother,” I answered. “It says, ‘Jonathan and Charlotte are my favorite people in the world. Make sure they take their naps and don’t climb out of their cribs.’”

  “I’m too big for my crib,” he said. “Write back to Grandmother and tell her that I climb out because I am not a baby, and I need a bed. Tell her I need a bed.”

  I need one too, I thought.

  CHAPTER 23

  The next day, after I laid the children down for their naps, I took my clothes from my trunk and laid them on Martin’s bed. I had been living out of that trunk for nearly two weeks, putting my dress and undergarments back at the end of every evening and my nightdress every morning.

  I am still me, I thought. And I am here. I live here.

  I opened Martin’s wardrobe, where Catherine’s lovely clothes still hung like ghosts waiting for her to return. I took each dress and folded it carefully and put it into my trunk, replacing the space in the wardrobe with one of my own dresses.

  I placed her shoes in my trunk as well. Her nightdresses. Her fancy undergarments and her plain everyday ones.

  I threw nothing away. It wasn’t mine to discard. Perhaps after a time, I would ask Martin if I could put these lovely items in in the poor box at the church. For now, they were safe in my trunk.

  I took the children out on my shopping errands. It was not so cold as it had been and they enjoyed the fresh air. Charlotte rode in the pram and Jonathan held obediently to the carriage’s side. He prattled about Noah’s Ark. We endeavored to name every animal we could think of. Lions, Bears, Giraffes, Elephants, Rabbits, Horses. “Cows!” said Charlotte. “Monkeys!” said Jonathan. “Kangaroos!” I said.

  I had a small inspiration.

  I counted the day’s grocery money. I could buy a nice pork loin. It was difficult to find good vegetables in the winter, but there might be some decent sweet potatoes or a butternut squash. But not this day. I went into the market and bought eggs and an inexpensive slab of bacon. “We are going to have breakfast for dinner,” I told the children.

  “Hoorah!” said Jonathan.

  I had one dollar and ten cents left. I put the eggs in the pram tucked out of the way of Charlotte’s feet.

  “Do you want a pocketful of bacon today?” I asked Jonathan, who happily took the wrapped slab from me. Too big for his pocket, he tucked it inside his jacket. “I’ve got a tummy full of bacon,” he declared. “And when I eat it up I will have a tummy full of bacon again!”

  We walked to the general store where I had strolled up and down the aisles a few days before, looking for a box of straight pins. This time I knew which aisle I wanted. In bins across the shelf were small carved wooden animals.

  I picked up Charlotte to show her. Jonathan was already hopping from foot to foot.

  “I think we need our own Noah’s Ark,” I said. “We have one dollar today and we need two of each animal, because Noah had two. They are five cents each so we can pick out ten different pairs of animals. The rest we can save and buy another day. So Jonny, you pick out five, and Charlotte, you can pick five.”

  Well, if that wasn’t the best thing ever. Jonathan chose the exotic animals: monkeys, giraffes, elephants, hippopotamuses, kangaroos. Charlotte went with the sweet-faced familiar animals: cats, dogs, horses, cows, lambs. We filled a basket with their selections.

  “Oh look!” I said, “I have ten cents left. So I get to choose an animal for the ark too!” I added two birds to the basket. “The ark has to have doves - so Noah will know when life is back to normal.”

  When we arrive at home, I took the cardboard box, and turned it upside down, so the open end was on the top.

  “This is the ark,” I explained. “And you, Jonathan, are Noah, and Charlotte, you are Mrs. Noah. And you need to gather all the animals, because I think it is starting to rain.”

  Martin was not upset that I spent the grocery money on the wooden menagerie. As a matter of fact, when our simple supper was ready, he instructed the children to line up the animals two by two on the kitchen table, as it was ‘feeding time.’ They giggled throughout the meal, pretending to feed bits of bacon to the figures.

  And Martin was not even overtly upset when the inevitable happened. And by inevitable, I do not mean the milk spilled by a thirsty giraffe. It was the inevitable - even proper - outcome of this remodeled family.

  Charlotte handed me the doves and said, “You feed birds, Mama.”

  We knew it would happen. It was supposed to happen. I was here in this apartment in New Haven as the legal wife to the husband and mother to the children. The children could hardly be expected to call me Auntie forever.

  But that first ‘Mama.’ Oh.

  Even Jonathan was taken aback and immediately looked to his father. I think both the boy and I expected Martin to be angry, or at least correct Charlotte immediately.

  To our surprise, Martin said, “Yes, Mama, feed your doves.”

  Jonathan audibly sighed in relief. He looked to me and smiled. Martin smiled also, but with a soft sadness.

  “Papa,” said Jonathan, “Mama” - he looked at me - “Mama said we will save our pennies to buy more, until we have every kind of animal.”

  “I’ll save too,” said Martin. “I would like a rhinoceros.”

  “You need TWO rhinotherutheth!” said Charlotte.

  “Then I will have to save twice as hard,” said Martin.

  Late that night, from my nest in the parlor, I thought I heard Jonathan crying. I tiptoed to the bedroom, wanting to quiet the boy before he woke his exhausted father or his baby sister. I peeked into the room. It was not Jonathan crying.

  Martin sat on the edge of the bed. In the dark, he stared at the open doors of the wardrobe. The wardrobe with the portrait of Catherine atop and my clothes inside.

  I crept away.

  CHAPTER 24

  It was finally Spring. The temperate weather was so welcome, I nearly cried in relief every morning that I could walk outside without shivering. How I had missed my father’s many fireplaces.

  There was a lovely park nearby. With a decent place for me to sit while the children skipped and ran and even turned a crooked somersault. Even more delightful, there would often be another young mother or two who would join me. Several times a week, for perhaps a whole hour, I could converse with a woman. It felt like years indeed since I had spoken to someone even remotely like me.

  These women talked mostly of housekeeping and children and husbands. They were mainly good-natured and amusing, but I had nothing worthwhile to contribute on any of those subjects. Although I loved talking with them, I wondered if they ever thought of anything else. I did not see any world significance in rubbing lemon oil onto a table. One day, enjoying the company of two nice young mothers, I asked what they thought of Mr. Lenin and the upheaval in Russia. And they knew of it, and had definite opinions. They believed it was disgraceful, but brought about by the horrible conditions of the poor in Russia. They hoped it would not lead to war. I was ashamed that I had considered myself superior. These women were not foolish nor empty-headed; they had never been asked.

  There was one particular mother who was a suffragette. Constance Hadley was well-educated, cynical, and droll. Her daughter Sadie was four, and was prone to hollering and whooping li
ke a red Indian. Constance would yell back, “Good for you, Sadie. Stay loud. Girls do not have to be quiet!” I believed her husband was a socialist - or worse, although I was not sure what could be worse. I found Constance both shocking and completely wonderful.

  I confided in her my desire to be a journalist and fight for the rights of people, especially colored people.

  “The colored people in this country have it very bad indeed,” she said. “If I were you I would concentrate on demanding better education for the children.”

  “Why not better jobs for the fathers and health services for mothers?”

  “Because I think our generation is already lost. Work on the future.”

  “Are you really from Connecticut?” I asked.

  “Ha!” she laughed. “Boston!”

  I loved Constance from that moment forward, but I privately disagreed. I thought children could get better educated if they lived in nicer neighborhoods. That could only happen if their fathers made better wages. I still wanted the extra nickel for my father’s workers.

  Constance also supplied me with some good practical advice. Charlotte was now two and a half, and still not out of diapers, and Constance early on discerned that the children were not my own, and so I had not been a factor in training Jonathan.

  “Look,” she said. “The major issue with babies is that we make them so comfortable. Charlotte doesn’t care about wetting her nappy because she doesn’t really feel it. Your diapers are too good. And you scoop her up and change her immediately so she never feels discomfort. Once a baby has reached an age where she has some control - which is now by the way - you need to let her feel awful when she soils herself. Just put her in regular undergarments and when she is soaked or soiled and hating it, you say, ‘Well, there, now that you are in big girl clothes, you have to tell me when you need to go, BEFORE you need to.’ One week at most, she will figure out when that is.”

  And Charlotte did. I kissed her and praised her. Charlotte, that is, not Constance, although the other would have been entirely appropriate as well.

  Constance’s biggest favor to me, aside from her intelligent discourse, which was like a banquet to a starving soul, was directions to the public library.

  What an institution was the New Haven Public Library! A ten block walk from our home, it was an enormous, beautiful, classical repository of entertainment and information. It possessed an entire separate wing for children’s books, and allowed the children to borrow two books each week. And in addition, it hosted a reading hour every Wednesday morning, with a beautiful old woman who held my children and a dozen more in rapt open-mouthed attention.

  And for me? More books on more subjects than I ever dreamed existed. I borrowed the novels of the Brontes and Jane Austen, and the poetry of Emily Dickinson, and once in a while, to prove I was open-minded, I would read a book by a man. And there was Art and History and Geography. These last were also appreciated at home by Martin and the children. The little ones would sit with him at the table while I did the washing up, and he would point out exotic places with stories of India and China and Africa (mostly invented, I believe, but thoroughly enjoyable.)

  As Spring progressed, I felt refreshed with the smallest thimble of optimism.

  CHAPTER 25

  With April came Easter, and we packed up the children and traveled to Springfield to spend the holidays with my family.

  My mother was overjoyed to see us. She hugged everyone and exclaimed how the children had grown and thrived under my care.

  “Mama lets us carry the shopping,” said Jonathan, and Mother wept in both joy and sorrow - with joy that the little boy called me his mother, and in sorrow that his true mother was gone from us. My father showed more restraint, but I could see that he was gratified and perhaps self-satisfied that he had done the right thing. He had pressured Martin and me into marriage, and just look, his magnanimous expression boasted, it has turned out splendidly.

  Malcolm had appeared to grow very tall in just four months, and Amelia was the woman of fifteen that I had never been at that age. She was not required to work at the lumberyard, so I consoled myself that I had at least been grown up enough to drink with the O’Hara boys on Thursday evenings. She was astonishingly pretty though, and I feared that Peter O’Hara, if he had seen her, would be as lovestruck as he had been over Catherine. I hoped not. I wanted him to find a beautiful wife. But I did not want that wife to be Amelia.

  We arrived on Saturday afternoon. My father and Malcolm took the small bags we carried with us upstairs. Mother explained our accommodations.

  “Amelia has taken over your room, as it is sunnier and larger than her bedroom. We thought of turning her little space into a nursery for the children tonight, but considering they are not so familiar with the house, I thought it might be more comforting to them to keep you all together. So I had Malcolm carry Amelia’s bed into Cath… into the guest bedroom…for the children. They are little enough to be both accommodated by the one bed, I think.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. And I made my way up the staircase to the west bedroom that had always been Catherine’s. The room possessed a large feather bed, and now, tucked under the eaves, a small bed that still bore Amelia’s pink quilt. I unpacked our Easter Sunday finery and hung them in the closet that had been empty since Catherine married Martin.

  Dinner was loud and happy. Father kept attempting to instill some decorum but the babies were excited to see their grandparents and did not show any evidence that they had foregone their naps. Jonathan told of his adventures in the ark, which by this time had been replaced by a sturdier box, though it was in constant need of repair. And he prattled on about the library and the playground and Mrs. Battle and Mrs. Constance Hadley, and even Mrs. Giametti and Mr. Giametti’s headaches. There was not a secret to be held in his little friendly head.

  “Mama has pictures of book people in the parlor, so she can see them at night,” he said. I’m not sure what my parents deduced from that comment. I was fortunate they did not pursue it and he progressed merrily to carrying potatoes in pockets.

  After dinner, Father suggested we retire to the drawing room for Easter vigil prayers, but in short order, both of the little ones were asleep, Charlotte on my lap and Jonathan on Mother’s.

  “It’s been a long day,” said Martin, “with the Holiday to come, so we’d better excuse ourselves and get the children to bed. Thank you so much for a wonderful meal.”

  With that, we said goodnight with kisses all around. Martin took Jonathan from Mother, and we made our way to our bedroom. Catherine’s bedroom.

  We stood for a moment, each holding a sleeping child.

  “Let the children sleep in the large bed with you,” said Martin. “I’ll sleep in the small bed, of course.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  We all attended Easter Sunday services together. The children were well-behaved considering how long the Mass went on. I had given each child one more wooden animal pair for the ark as an Easter gift - tigers for Jonathan and ostriches for Charlotte, and I let them play quietly behind me on the pew. I told them all animals needed to whisper in church, and they agreed that the animals would be obedient. And when I prayed during the service, I prayed that the children would reflect well on my mothering, and that they would not reveal how little we attended church in New Haven.

  Later, I helped prepare the Easter dinner with Mother. She was surprised and pleased at how efficient I had become in the kitchen. Before taking on a family of my own, I had been little interested, and was less an asset than a nuisance.

  “How accomplished you have become,” said Mother. “And you look so well and fit. I would venture to say that your temperament has greatly improved. There is nothing like the love of family to bring you peace.”

  “I thought you had instructed me to stay true to myself,” I t
eased. “If I become patient and sweet-tempered no one will know it’s me.”

  “No chance of that,” she said. “But you seem a happier version of you.”

  “Well I love the children and I am becoming a competent mother. And baking bread does suit me in some ways more than ordering nails for the lumberyard.”

  “And Martin?” she asked. “How is your husband?”

  “He’s good to me, and a loving father. He still mourns so terribly. He tries though to put on a good face for Jonny and Charlotte.” I did not add that he had still not taken me for a wife. And perhaps never would.

  CHAPTER 26

  By the second week of May, the weather had turned to instant summer. The winter coats and boots were packed away in mothballs in our cellar space. I thought that I could use Jonathan’s coat for Charlotte, but offered Charlotte’s coat to one of the women I met at the park, for her infant daughter to use the following year. “Oh no,” she said. “It is too pretty. You must keep that for your next child.” I felt ashamed and exposed, and so readily agreed that I should have thought of that myself. So the tiny blue coat was wrapped in tissue and placed with the rest of the winter things in the box that had been the ark. The children had grown weary of that game anyway, although not of the wooden animals. The animals were, in turn, a farm, a circus, and best of all, a zoo.

  We went to the library and borrowed every book on zoos that we could find. And when I wrote to Mother to tell them about the children’s latest obsession, she found a wonderful big book in Springfield’s best store and sent it along to them - an early birthday present for Jonathan.