Paul and Madeline were less destructive than the Poles and less expensive than the tennis court. Unlike the unmarried mother, they did not leave suicide notes in the car. They were, on the face of it, quiet and undemanding. But there was an unhappiness about them, a lack of ease, that trailed through the house, affecting the general atmosphere. Sometimes Edward felt that having them there was bad for Allie, but he wasn’t certain why or how. He said nothing about it, since, as he told himself, he saw them only weekends and couldn’t judge.
THE MORNING OF Madeline’s birthday, searching for an excuse to leave the city a day early and so have a long weekend, Edward remembered that he and Madeline had had a quarrel of a sort, and he thought, aggrieved, She is keeping me out of my own house. Edward had been drinking the evening before and felt, if not ill, at least indecisive. He sat at the dining-room table unable to drink his coffee or leave it alone, uncomfortable in the empty apartment but reluctant to go out into the heat of the street. Feeling sorry for himself, half wishing himself out of town, he thought of his last conversation with Madeline.
He had found her before one of his wife’s white-painted bookcases. Madeline had been sunbathing and smelled of scented oil. Her hair, too long and thick for the season, had been pinned up and was beginning to straggle. Through the window, Edward could see the lawn sloping away to one of Anna’s gardens. Anna, with Allie at her heels, moved along the flower border, doing something. They were fair-haired and unhurried. Edward looked at them and approved. He turned to Madeline and frowned. She, ignoring him, knelt on the floor to examine the bottom shelf.
“Looking for something special?” he asked.
Without turning, she said, “I found one book I liked and I thought you might have another.”
“What was that?”
“You probably haven’t read it,” Madeline said, intending the insult. “It was about a girl who worked in a travel agency and fell in love with a lawyer. It was more than that, really, but that was the main thing.”
“It sounds like a woman’s book,” Edward said. “What happened to the girl and the lawyer?” It seemed to him impossible to stop talking.
“He deceived the girl, so she ran a car into something and killed them both.”
“Are you sure it belongs to us?” Edward asked.
“Yes. And it was good. I think someone gave it to you.” She looked at him for the first time. “I can always tell your books by the funny little plate at the front.”
Edward looked back at her with loathing and said, “It doesn’t sound like terribly healthy reading for a young girl. I think you should spend more time at other things.”
“Do you?” Madeline said. “Excuse me, I have to get by you to get out.”
She left the room and ran upstairs, her heart pounding with fright and anger.
“DO YOU KNOW what I hate more than anything?” Madeline said to Paul on the morning of her birthday. “I hate older men who look at girls and insult them.” It was an unusually chatty remark for Madeline, but Paul was not listening.
“That little pear tree is dying,” he said.
“Let it.” Madeline was a city child. The country, with its hills and stretches and unexplained silences, bored and depressed her. Paul considered her.
“Where would you rather be?”
“I don’t know,” Madeline said indifferently. “Camp was worse.”
“But Mrs. Tracy found you alone in an apartment,” he said, as if he were telling her about someone else.
Madeline made a face. She was accustomed to being discussed, and she could imagine Mrs. Tracy’s version of the story. It was true; she had been found alone in her mother’s apartment. Madeline was to have slept there overnight in the interval between the end of school and the start of her holidays, but her mother had forgotten to write and tell her that she was spending the summer with the Tracys, or had neglected to post the letter, and Madeline had remained in the apartment three weeks.
Her mother had been away since Christmas. The apartment was shrouded in white dust covers, the telephone disconnected. No one knew that Madeline was there except the janitor, who had given her the key. Her allowance for the summer, a lump sum from her father, had arrived before the closing of school. She lived on chocolates and liverwurst sandwiches, went to the movies every day, and was ideally happy. All around her in the building was a pleasant bustle of latchkeys, footsteps, voices in the kitchen air shaft, sometimes a radio. Then Anna Tracy had arrived and carried her off like a scoop of ice cream.
“I think I like cities,” Madeline said. She lay back with her head on the pillow and closed her eyes. “Are you never going?” she said, not intending it as a question. “If you want to use the bathroom, please go now. I’m going to wash my hair.”
The birthday must have put her in an excellent temper, Paul thought. Otherwise, she would never have suggested that he use the bathroom first, for it was a constant grievance between them. It adjoined both their rooms, but Madeline treated it entirely as her own. She left powder on the bathmat, towels on the floor. Every morning, Paul found his towels pushed aside and Madeline’s underthings hanging to dry. Ashamed for her, Paul would mop the tub and cap the toothpaste. Madeline would admit no part of Paul into her life. They did not even have a cake of soap in common. He might be one of Anna Tracy’s casualties; she was not. Without finding words for it, Paul knew that her untidiness had something to do with her attitude toward him and the entire household. He wished she would employ a less troublesome method of showing it.
He stood up and, taking advantage of her humor, paused at the door, and said, “If I go now, will you read my term paper while I’m gone? I must give it to the mailman this morning.”
He stepped aside as he said it, and for an astonished moment Madeline thought he expected her to throw something at him. But it was only because of Allie, who had been struggling with the door handle and now burst into the room, hairbrush in hand.
“I was told to tell you a happy birthday,” she said to Madeline. “Will you do my hair?”
Madeline sat up. “Am I the only person in this house who can do things?” she asked. “No, I am not going to do your hair and I’m not going to read Paul’s paper, because it’s my birthday.”
Allie sat down on the bed, leaning comfortably across Madeline’s feet. She offered the hairbrush as if she hadn’t heard. “What an adorable nightgown that is,” she said. “Doris is making you a cake.”
Madeline kicked at her from under the covers. “Get off and get out,” she said. “You’re more annoying than Paul.” She looked at Paul and he smiled foolishly, backing into the hall with his books.
“I’ll be back later,” he promised.
“Now, as for you –” Madeline said to Allie. She took the hairbrush and began brushing Allie’s hair so hard that it hurt.
Allie, accustomed to this daily punishment, said only, “Braid it good and tight, otherwise it comes undone in the water.”
“Since it’s my birthday,” said Madeline, “could you do me a favor and leave me alone all day? Without even speaking to me?”
“No,” Allie said, and added warningly, “Don’t yell at me – Mummy’s coming.”
“Happy birthday!” Mrs. Tracy said as she opened the door. She was wearing blue and looked younger than Madeline. “Allie, let Madeline get dressed. Go on downstairs and put her present in front of her place.” She moved quietly about the room picking up and straightening Madeline’s belongings. It had been her own room before she married, and it was perfect for a jeune fille, but Madeline, she felt, would have been just as happy in a tent on the lawn.
“You’re a very sloppy girl,” she observed, “even for your age. But I daresay it’s a reaction to boarding school. That’s one good thing about this house. People can relax in it and be what they are. I mean I couldn’t survive the winter without a summer here.”
“Couldn’t you?” said Madeline. “I could, with pleasure.”
No one – not even Made
line – was ever rude to Mrs. Tracy, and she stood still, rooted with shock, Madeline’s bathing suit in her hand. Then she saw that Madeline was crying. “Oh!” Mrs. Tracy exclaimed. “Not on your birthday! Allie, honey, will you do what Mummy tells you and go downstairs?”
She sat down on the bed where Allie had been. “I can’t think what can be wrong,” she said. She did not touch Madeline but folded her hands on her lap and looked at them, frowning. “On your birthday,” she repeated wonderingly. “I know it sounds trite, but this is the best time of your life, this and the next four or five years. Why, when I think of your mother at your age! All the gardenias and the orchids! These are the years that should be absolute heaven for you.”
From behind her hands, Madeline said, “I wish you had left me in town. I was perfectly all right.”
“I can’t listen to such nonsense,” Mrs. Tracy said. She stood up, smoothing the covers at Madeline’s feet. “Allie, will you please, for the love of God, do what Mummy tells you for once and go downstairs?”
“I don’t like Mr. Tracy,” Madeline said, “and he doesn’t like me.”
“You’re being dramatic,” Mrs. Tracy said, “but it’s normal at your age.” More gently, she added, “But you mustn’t cry over nothing. In a few years, you can do anything you please, as I do, or your mother does. Now get dressed and come to breakfast, like a good girl. This is a terrible start for a birthday.”
Still hiding her face, Madeline nodded, and Mrs. Tracy fled down the staircase, relieved to be away from so much emotion. Perhaps Madeline had been miserable all summer.
In the kitchen, she found Allie sitting on a high stool, holding a large mixing bowl between her knees. She was scraping the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula and licking off bits of cake batter. Her pale hair, brushed but unbraided, was smeared with batter and stuck to her cheeks.
“Allie! Not before breakfast,” Mrs. Tracy said, from habit. Allie, aware of the absent-minded voice, went on without answering. Mrs. Tracy sat down at the table and leaned her head on her hand. Finally, she said, “When you were upstairs, before I came in, how did Madeline act?”
“Like always.”
“What does that tell me? Put that thing – that bowl – down. What is ‘always’?”
“With Madeline, it means to be rude.”
“Yes. But was she crying? Did she say anything about me?”
“No,” Allie said, embarrassed.
“This is dreadful,” said Mrs. Tracy. “I can’t live for the rest of the summer, even seven days of it, with someone in the house who is thinking only of the train to New York.”
This was beyond Allie. She murmured, “If she is going, will we have a birthday party just the same?”
“There! The party!” Mrs. Tracy cried. “And your father won’t be here. This is his fault. If he had been here, if he had spent more time with us, none of this would have happened.”
“We could call him,” Allie said. “I can get long distance.”
“Maybe he doesn’t like this house, either,” Mrs. Tracy said. “I can’t understand any of this. Everyone I know has always been happy. My summers have always been so perfect, ever since I was a child.” And, bursting into tears, she ran out to the garden, past the astonished postman, who had walked up from the road with a package too large for the mailbox. It contained a present for Madeline, an unsuitable evening dress chosen by her stepmother, whom she had never met.
FROM THE WINDOW of his room, Paul saw Mrs. Tracy run across the lawn. She stopped and bent down to pull three or four bits of wild grass from a flower bed. Then she wiped her eyes with her hands and walked calmly back to the house.
He turned to his books and wondered how soon it would be safe to approach Madeline again. A moment later, he heard the postman drive away and knew that he had missed the deadline for his term paper.
Mrs. Tracy put in a call to Mr. Tracy, and Paul began composing a letter to the head of the extension course, asking if he might submit his paper a few days late. He would show the letter to Madeline, he thought.
In the next room, Madeline had stopped crying and fallen asleep. She dreamed that someone had given her a doll house. When a bell rang downstairs, it merged into her dream as something to do with school. Actually, the ringing was caused by the long-distance operator, who had at first reported that the circuits to New York were busy and was now ready to complete the call. Mrs. Tracy entered the house in time to take the receiver from Allie’s hand and assure her husband that nothing was the matter, that she had called only to say good morning.
“It’s a lovely morning here,” she said. “Couldn’t you come up in time for dinner tonight? It’s for Madeline’s sake – you know what a birthday means to a young girl.”
“I don’t know,” Edward said. “I suppose I could.” His office would be unbearably hot, and he was beginning to feel foolish about his quarrel with Madeline. “She’s only a kid,” he said aloud.
“That’s just the point. We mustn’t take her too seriously. And it’s her birthday,” Mrs. Tracy said, as if this fact were a talisman, something that would cause the day to fall into place.
When she had hung up, Allie, who had been listening, looked at her accusingly. “I heard Madeline say she didn’t like him,” she said.
“People often say things,” Mrs. Tracy said. “You must never pay attention to what people say if you know the opposite to be true.”
“Like what?” said Allie.
“Well, for instance,” Mrs. Tracy said seriously, “I could believe I was the only person who had enjoyed being here this summer. But I know it isn’t reasonable.”
She had, in fact, put the idea out of her head while pulling grass from the garden.
“Now,” she said, “will you please, for the last time, call Paul and Madeline, so that we can get breakfast over with and get this day under way?”
THE WEDDING RING
(1969)
ON MY WINDOWSILL is a pack of cards, a bell, a dog’s brush, a book about a girl named Jewel who is a Christian Scientist and won’t let anyone take her temperature, and a white jug holding field flowers. The water in the jug has evaporated; the sand-and-amber flowers seem made of paper. The weather bulletin for the day can be one of several: No sun. A high arched yellow sky. Or, creamy clouds, stillness. Long motionless grass. The earth soaks up the sun. Or, the sky is higher than it ever will seem again, and the sun far away and small.
From the window, a field full of goldenrod, then woods; to the left as you stand at the front door of the cottage, the mountains of Vermont.
The screen door slams and shakes my bed. That was my cousin. The couch with the India print spread in the next room has been made up for him. He is the only boy cousin I have, and the only American relation my age. We expected him to be homesick for Boston. When he disappeared the first day, we thought we would find him crying with his head in the wild cucumber vine; but all he was doing was making the outhouse tidy, dragging out of it last year’s magazines. He discovers a towel abandoned under his bed by another guest, and shows it to each of us. He has unpacked a trumpet, a hatchet, a pistol, and a water bottle. He is ready for anything except my mother, who scares him to death.
My mother is a vixen. Everyone who sees her that summer will remember, later, the gold of her eyes and the lovely movement of her head. Her hair is true russet. She has the bloom women have sometimes when they are pregnant or when they have fallen in love. She can be wild, bitter, complaining, and ugly as a witch, but that summer is her peak. She has fallen in love.
My father is – I suppose – in Montreal. The guest who seems to have replaced him except in authority over me (he is still careful, still courts my favor) drives us to a movie. It is a musical full of monstrously large people. My cousin sits intent, bites his nails, chews a slingshot during the love scenes. He suddenly dives down in the dark to look for lost, mysterious objects. He has seen so many movies that this one is nearly over before he can be certain he has seen it befor
e. He always knows what is going to happen and what they are going to say next.
At night we hear the radio – disembodied voices in a competition, identifying tunes. My mother, in the living room, seen from my bed, plays solitaire and says from time to time, “That’s an old song I like,” and “When you play solitaire, do you turn out two cards or three?” My cousin is not asleep either; he stirs on his couch. He shares his room with the guest. Years later we will be astonished to realize how young the guest must have been – twenty-three, perhaps twenty-four. My cousin, in his memories, shared a room with a middle-aged man. My mother and I, for the first and last time, ever, sleep in the same bed. I see her turning out the cards, smoking, drinking cold coffee from a breakfast cup. The single light on the table throws the room against the black window. My cousin and I each have an extra blanket. We forget how the evening sun blinded us at suppertime – how we gasped for breath.
My mother remarks on my hair, my height, my teeth, my French, and what I like to eat, as if she had never seen me before. Together, we wash our hair in the stream. The stones at the bottom are the color of trout. There is a smell of fish and wildness as I kneel on a rock, as she does, and plunge my head in the water. Bubbles of soap dance in place, as if rooted, then the roots stretch and break. In a delirium of happiness I memorize ferns, moss, grass, seedpods. We sunbathe on camp cots dragged out in the long grass. The strands of wet hair on my neck are like melting icicles. Her “Never look straight at the sun” seems extravagantly concerned with my welfare. Through eyelashes I peep at the milky-blue sky. The sounds of this blissful moment are the radio from the house; my cousin opening a ginger-ale bottle; the stream, persistent as machinery. My mother, still taking extraordinary notice of me, says that while the sun bleaches her hair and makes it light and fine, dark hair (mine) turns ugly – “like a rusty old stove lid” – and should be covered up. I dart into the cottage and find a hat: a wide straw hat, belonging to an unknown summer. It is so large I have to hold it with a hand flat upon the crown. I may look funny with this hat on, but at least I shall never be like a rusty old stove lid. The cots are empty; my mother has gone. By mistake, she is walking away through the goldenrod with the guest, turned up from God knows where. They are walking as if they wish they were invisible, of course, but to me it is only a mistake, and I call and run and push my way between them. He would like to take my hand, or pretends he would like to, but I need my hand for the hat.
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