Ernestine had bought a large roast for supper and spent a good part of the early afternoon telling Tom what she intended to do to him, and how she intended to torture his cat, if he charred a single inch of it. It was the first roast we had had since we left Montclair.
Lillian was stationed at the top of the taller lighthouse as a lookout for the Nantucket boat. As soon as the smoke was visible, she let us know, and Anne lined us up in the dining room for a final inspection.
“Everyone’s alive and whole,” she began, just as Tom stuck his head into the doorway to see what was going on, “and nobody’s in jail.” Tom’s head disappeared again. “So I guess we did a pretty good job.”
She cleared her throat and paced the floor in front of us.
“You all know,” she said in her best oratorical style, “that I don’t enjoy making speeches.”
This was something we didn’t know at all because there were few things Anne enjoyed more. Before she went to college, she had been a mainstay of the high school debating team, and drove her arguments home with such enthusiasm that her coach used to tell her she was supposed merely to stump her opponents, not tree them.
“Now that I am about to relinquish my authority,” she continued, “I want to thank you one and all for your fine spirit of cooperation.
“I would caution you about three things,” she said, holding up the three fingers of her right hand and counting them off one at a time. “Don’t reveal to Mother about, one, Tom’s being arrested; two, the disgraceful clam chowder episode; or, three, Martha’s wearing insufficient clothing to the beach the day we arrived.”
“What’s she talking about, Fred?” Dan whispered loudly. “And why is she hollering and sticking out her arms like that?”
“Search me, Dan,” Fred whispered back just as loudly.
“I’m talking about this,” said Anne, forgetting her role as public speaker and leaning over so her face was on the level of theirs. “If you tell Mother about Tom and the fat woman, or about the clam chowder, or about the day Martha wore the under half of Mother’s suit to the beach, I’ll murder you.”
“You mean,” asked Fred, “the day she was naked except for that black underwear?”
“I like that!” Martha protested.
“That’s just what I mean,” Anne nodded. “Mother’d die if she heard it.”
We started for the dock. Jane walked some of the way by herself, and then Anne and Ernestine carried her together, in a chair they made of their hands and wrists. We knew Mother would want to see all of us when her boat pulled in.
In a person’s lifetime there may be not more than half a dozen occasions that he can look back to in the certain knowledge that right then, at that moment, there was room for nothing but happiness in his heart.
The walk to the boat that afternoon was one of those occasions.
The steamer rounded Brant Point and we could begin to distinguish the passengers.
“I think I see Mother,” Lillian shouted breathlessly.
“Where?” we asked her. “Where?”
Lillian was too excited to tell us. “Mother,” she screamed, and then jumped up and down so that Anne had to grab her dress to keep her away from the edge of the dock.
Then we all saw Mother. She was waving, and it looked as if perhaps she were jumping up and down a little too. She was still dressed in widow’s clothes, but her coloring had come back. Perhaps it was just a trick of the wind, which was billowing her dress behind her and may have accounted for the jaunty angle of her hat, but she seemed stronger and more sure of herself than we had ever seen her before.
In a matter of minutes, the boat was tied to the dock and Mother was coming down the gangplank, struggling with two suitcases. Martha wasn’t the only one thinking about saving tips.
People stood back and gave us room as we descended on her. First it was a mass greeting, and then we could tell that she was picking out each of us, and checking us off in her mind.
“It’s so good to be home,” she said. “I can’t tell you how I felt when I saw all of you standing on the dock.”
We said it was good to have her home. With the youngest ones hanging onto her skirts, and the rest of us trying to get as close as we could, we started walking down the dock.
“I believe all of you have grown,” Mother told us, “and all of you look so tan and well!”
“You should have seen us with the chicken pox,” Fred said. “We didn’t look so well then.”
“We were sick as dogs,” Dan agreed. “And we took castor oil, too, Mother.”
“That was fine,” Mother said absently. “I knew you’d do …” She stopped dead. “Chicken pox?” she said. “What about chicken pox?”
“Didn’t we write you about that?” Anne asked innocently.
“Mercy Maude,” said Mother. “You know perfectly well you didn’t. Who had it?”
“All of us,” Anne grinned. “We got it the day you left.” She turned to the boys. “You might at least have waited until Mother got home, to break the news.”
“That wasn’t one of the things you told us not to tell,” Fred said defensively.
“You didn’t have anything else, did you?” Mother asked.
Anne shook her head.
“Anything else happen you didn’t write me about?”
“That was the only important thing. Really!”
Mother reached out, over the heads of Bob and Jack, and squeezed Anne impulsively around the waist. Anne looked as if whatever she had been through in the last five weeks had been worth while.
Ernestine personally supervised the final stages of the roast beef, and it was red and tender. There were candles on the dinner table, and we used the good silver. No holly was to be had on Nantucket, at least in the summertime, but we decked the halls with boughs of bayberry.
Mother thought the roast beef was delicious and made a point of complimenting Tom on it.
“It ain’t done quite as much as it ought to be,” Tom told her, “but we got a lot of cooks around here spoiling the cloth.”
“I’m afraid,” Mother said to us after Tom had retired to the kitchen, “that we won’t be able to have roast beef as often as we used to. That’ll be all right, won’t it?”
“We know it,” Martha said. “You don’t have to worry about that.”
“We’re used to substitutes,” Frank put in.
“We’ll have to rely a little more on less expensive things like—well, liver, cold cuts, fish, and clam chowder.”
“I love clam chowder,” said Ernestine, glaring at Frank. “We’ll have some of that real soon.”
“She eats it until it comes out of her ears,” Frank smirked complacently. Then imitating Tom, he laughed through his nose. “Henc, henc, I’m sorry for what I done, but henc, henc, henc.”
“What’s the matter, dear?” Mother asked. “Is something stuck in your windpipe? Hit him on the back, Bill.”
“There’s nothing the matter with him,” said Bill, who obliged anyway, with all his might.
“It’s just a noise he makes,” Anne explained.
“Oh,” said Mother, obviously relieved. “That’s good. Only I don’t believe I’d ever make a noise like that unless I had to, dear.”
Anne thought we were skating too close to both the clam chowder and the Tom-and-Stick episodes, and was eager to change the subject.
“I think it’s time for Martha’s surprise,” she said. “What do you think, Mother, we only spent $300 of the money you gave us.”
“Why you couldn’t have,” Mother replied. “The tickets to Nantucket must have cost … and Martha wrote she had forgotten her clothes … and the milk bill … You didn’t sell anything, did you, dear?”
“That was my surprise, you speech-maker you,” Martha protested. “You said I could tell her.”
“That’s what I want you to do,” Anne said. “You were in charge of the budget, so you’re the one to tell her.”
“Yes, you tell me, dear,�
� Mother nodded.
“We spent $296.05,” said Martha, who always knew the bank balance to the last penny.
“I don’t know how you did it,” Mother told us, shaking her head. “Why if we can keep going at that rate, I know everything will be all right.”
“And we’ve been eating like kings,” Ernestine put in.
“I’d like you to help me run the house, just as you’ve been doing,” Mother said. “And I’d like Martha to keep the budget—goodness knows I never could manage money that well.”
“You’ll have to make out a requisition form in triplicate when you want even two cents for a stamp,” Anne warned.
“No she won’t either,” Martha said. “Mother’s an exception. She’ll only have to make out one form, and I’ll fill out the two duplicates.”
“Thank you, dear,” said Mother. She sounded as if she meant it.
Mother had brought each of us a present. Not expensive presents, such as Dad used to bring when he returned from Europe, she explained. Just something to let us know she’d been thinking of us.
She brought out the presents while we were finishing our dessert. There were Czech dolls for Jane and Lillian, and Paris hats for Martha, Ernestine, and Anne. The girls’ presents were a big success.
But the boys had trouble hiding their disappointment, when they unwrapped their packages and found that each contained a blue beret.
“All the men in France are wearing them,” Mother said. “I thought you might like to start the style over here.”
“They’re just what we’ve always wanted,” Frank said stoutly, trying to banish from his mind what might happen to him and Bill if they wore the berets to school.
“I guess,” said Mother, “that I don’t know as much about getting presents for boys as your father did. That’s something I’m going to have to learn, isn’t it?”
“Dad never brought anything better,” Bill protested. “Just old stuff like knives and watches.”
“You’re good boys,” Mother said. “I’ll remember about old stuff like that if I go away again.”
Martha asked if Mother had remembered to bring the bathing suit from Montclair. Mother shook her head.
“I had some business in New York, and couldn’t spare the time to go to Montclair. So I picked you up a suit at Macy’s instead.” She handed Martha a package.
“If it comes below my knees,” said Martha, fumbling with the wrappings, “can I take a hem in it?”
“Goodness, it won’t come below your knees,” Mother laughed. “It’s a one-piece suit.”
“One piece?” Anne and Ernestine shouted together.
“No girls wear those old-fashioned two-piece suits any more, do they?” Mother asked.
“We do,” said Ernestine. “Remember Dad’s rules.”
“Modesty,” Anne recited flatly. “Skirts at least to the knees. Black stockings. And a minimum of skin showing.”
“Times change,” Mother told them, “and your father would have changed with them. In most things, he was a good bit ahead of his time. I’ll admit he usually stayed pretty far behind them when it came to how his daughters should dress.”
Martha held up the suit. It was light blue, and had a lowcut neck.
“If you say, ‘On your mark, get set, go’ to me,” Ernestine told her, “I’ll scratch your eyes out.”
“You’ll have to beat me to them,” said Anne. “Besides, my fingernails are longer.”
Martha looked at the two oldest girls, and there was sympathy in her glance.
“I wonder if the budget couldn’t stand new suits for Anne and Ernestine,” she asked.
“Those old maids would be too modest,” Frank put in.
The two girls didn’t say anything, but they looked at Mother.
“I believe the budget can stand a knife for each of the boys,” Mother said. “But I don’t believe we need any more bathing suits.”
She handed Anne and Ernestine each a package like Martha’s.
7. Belles on Their Toes
WITH MOTHER HOME, THE girls-self-imposed ban on dating was automatically lifted. Anne and Ernestine went back into circulation, hopefully rejoining their beach crowd of previous summers.
The competition was unusually stiff, because there were about three times as many girls as boys. Most of last summer’s crop of males were now in college and had summer jobs on the mainland. It was apparent that in order to get rings on their fingers, belles would have to be on their toes.
Morton Dykes, besides being tall and good looking, had brought a Hupmobile roadster to the island and had rented a motorboat. So he had long since been admitted—in fact shanghaied—into the crowd. The group collected each morning, before going into the water, in a hollow formed by three sand dunes, near the Cliff Beach Bathhouse. Of all the sheiks encamped on those semisecluded sands, Morton had amassed the largest and most eager harem.
But in spite of the manpower shortage, Anne at first wouldn’t have anything to do with him.
Anne may not have been a raging beauty, but she was no strain at all upon the eyes, especially in her new bathing suit. Also, there is a possibility that Morton had become tired of having a half-dozen panting females hurrying to strike a match, every time he put a cigarette in his mouth. In any event, he did every thing he could to get back in Anne’s good graces.
“I don’t see why you always give me the cold shoulder,” he told Anne one morning, sitting down beside her on the sand.
“If I weren’t a lady,” said Anne, “I’d give you something that started from the shoulder. And the result would be even colder.”
“I don’t see what you’re sore about.”
“Look,” Anne whispered. “There are at least fifteen beautiful women here who are dying for you to come and sit with them. Why don’t you go make one of them supremely happy? And leave me alone.”
“But I’ve just known them for a few weeks, and you and I are old buddies.”
“My Buddy,” Anne said sarcastically. “You’d better shove off, Buddy, before your mother sees you associating with the lower classes.”
“You mean on the boat?” Morton asked. “Listen, I’ve been wanting to tell you about that.”
“If you think there’s anything to be ashamed of in a large family,” Anne told him hotly, “you’re a bigger wet smack than I think you are.”
“And that,” called Ernestine, who was sitting a few feet away, “would set a world’s record.”
“It wasn’t your family,” Morton insisted, dropping his voice so that only Anne could hear. “It was that loud-mouthed little fugitive from the old folks’ home, with the cat on his shoulder.”
“You’re talking about the man I love,” Anne warned, but the shortage of boys was acute, and she seemed to be weakening. “We’re all crazy about Tom, and he’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
“I hadn’t heard about your father, and I never had met him. And I saw that man. And I thought … and, well, and Mother thought …”
“I don’t believe you’d better tell me what you thought or your mother thought,” Anne said. “I don’t believe I’d consider it flattering, and I have a strong feeling that Tom wouldn’t either.”
“Let’s forget it,” Morton smiled. “Relax and have a smoke. And let’s be friends, eh?”
He reached for a package of cigarettes, while a bevy of females, who hadn’t missed a thing, clutched for their matches. Anne looked quickly around the tops of the sand dunes, to make sure none of her brothers were spying.
“Okay, Buddy,” she grinned. “Light it for me, will you?”
He put two cigarettes in his mouth, chose among five biasing matches that were being poked into his face, lighted both smokes, and handed one to Anne. She took two long puffs and inhaled deeply.
“That’s the first cigarette I’ve had since I left Northampton,” she said contentedly. “It tastes fine.” She took another drag and inhaled again.
Ernestine, whose mouth had dropped open, watched ad
miringly and enviously as Anne puffed, expertly knocked off the ashes with her little finger, and finally flicked the butt over a dune.
“I didn’t know you did that,” Ernestine whispered, sidling over to Anne. “You go at it as if you’ve had plenty of experience.”
“What are you talking about?” Anne asked innocently. “Go at what?”
“You know very well what I mean. Puffing away at that cigarette like a dope fiend. I didn’t know you dissipated.”
“There’s lots of things you don’t know about me. Besides, everybody smokes in college.”
“Can I have one?”
“You’re not in college.”
“Can I just try one?” Ernestine whispered.
“I should say not. It’s going to be bad enough when I tell Mother I smoke, without having to confess anything about ruining your morals.”
“Anybody,” Ern asked loudly, “got a ciggie?”
“Let her have one,” said Morton, who had heard most of the whispering. “Here, Kid.”
He tossed her his package, and a box of unused matches.
“I seem to have left mine at home,” Ernestine said.
She took out a cigarette and tapped one end of it on the thumbnail of her left hand, as she had seen Morton do. Then she tapped the other end. She put it a third of the way into the center of her mouth and lighted it.
“Put that out,” Anne said in her ear. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself. You’re supposed to smoke those things, not eat them.”
No one except Anne was paying any attention.
Ernestine puffed, without inhaling, and took the cigarette from her mouth.
“That certainly,” she said loudly, spitting out flecks of tobacco that were clinging to her lips and tongue, “soothes my jangled nerves. Nothing’s worse than when you run out of ciggies.”
“Ciggies,” Anne whispered. “My cow!”
“What makes it do like that?” Ernestine asked her, contemplating the brownish, unraveled end that had been in her mouth. “It’s all coming apart.”
“You’re supposed to hold it in your lips, not your tonsils,” Anne said. “If you’re going to smoke, at least wait until I show you how, and stop humiliating me in public.”
Belles on Their Toes Page 6