All the Days and Nights

by William Maxwell

  Young Francis Whitehead

  THE Whiteheads lived on the sheltered side of a New Hampshire hill, less than half a mile from town. Their house was set back from the road, and there were so many low-skirted pine trees on both sides of the drive that Miss Avery, who had a parcel under her arm and was coming to see Mrs. Whitehead, was almost up to the house before she could see the green shutters and the high New England roofline. The driveway went past the garage and up to the front door, then around and down again to the road. Both garage doors were open and the afternoon sun shone upon Mrs. Whitehead’s Buick sedan and, beside it, a new and shiny blue convertible. While Miss Avery was admiring it, an Irish setter came bounding out of the shrubbery. The dog barked and whined and stepped on Miss Avery’s feet and blocked her way no matter where she turned, so that in desperation she gave him a shove with the flat of her hand.

  As soon as she did that, a window flew open upstairs and young Francis Whitehead put his head out. “Go on, beat it!” he said. Apparently he had no clothes on. His hair and his face and shoulders were dripping wet, and for a moment Miss Avery wasn’t sure whether Francis was talking to her or to the dog. “You silly creature!” he said, and whistled and gave orders and made threats until finally the dog disappeared around the side of the house. Then for the first time Francis looked at Miss Avery. “Oh,” he said. “It’s you. Come on in, why don’t you?”

  “All right,” she said. “I was going to.”

  “I’m in the shower,” Francis explained, “but Mother’s around somewhere. She’ll be glad to see you.” He drew his head in and closed the window.

  Miss Avery had stood by, in one capacity or another, while Francis learned to walk and to talk, to cut out strings of paper dolls, and ride a bicycle but they had seen very little of each other the last two or three years. Francis had been away at school much of the time. He was at Cornell. And Miss Avery decided, as she raised the knocker on the big front door, that he probably wouldn’t care to be reminded of the fact that she had once sewed buttons on his pantywaists. The knocker made a noise, but no one came. Miss Avery waited and waited, and finally she opened the door and walked in.

  The house was dark after the spring sunlight outside. Miss Avery felt blind as a mole. The first thing she saw was herself — her coat with the worn fur at the collar and her thin, unromantic, middle-aged face — reflected in a mirror that ran from floor to ceiling. She turned her eyes away and walked on into the library. Bookcases went nearly around the room. A wood fire was burning in the fireplace and the clock on the mantel was ticking loudly. Over by the French windows a card table had been set up. There was a pile of little baskets on it, and a number of chocolate rabbits and little chickens made out of cotton, and quantities of green and yellow wax-paper straw.

  Miss Avery put down her parcel, which contained some mending that Mrs. Whitehead had asked her to do, and stood looking at the confusion on the card table until a voice exclaimed, “Happy Easter!” She turned and found Mrs. Whitehead smiling at her. Mrs. Whitehead had a china dish in one hand and a paper bag in the other. She advanced upon Miss Avery, put both arms about her, and kissed her.

  “Easter is still two days off,” Miss Avery said. “This is only Good Friday.”

  “I know it is. I was just indulging myself,” Mrs. Whitehead said, and she carried the dish over to the card table and poured out the sackful of Easter eggs. “I was just thinking about you and here you are.” She drew Miss Avery down beside her on the sofa and took both of her hands. “How’s your mother? I’ve been meaning to stop in and see how she was but we’ve had so much company lately — Mrs. Howard from Portsmouth and Cousin Ada Sheffield right after that, and I really haven’t had a moment. And tell me how you are. That’s what I really want to know.”

  “Well,” Miss Avery began without enthusiasm, but Mrs. Whitehead had already got up and was searching everywhere for little dishes and jars, lifting the tops and peering into them hopefully.

  “I had some ginger, but it looks as if I’d eaten every scrap of it,” she said. “There isn’t a thing to offer you but Easter eggs.”

  Miss Avery tried to explain that it was all right; she didn’t like ginger any better than she liked Easter eggs, but Mrs. Whitehead paid no attention to her. “I was just going to fix some baskets. My only child is home for his spring vacation, and I’m having eight of his cronies to dinner tomorrow night. And they all have to have Easter baskets.” She gave up looking among the dishes and jars and sat down again, at the card table this time. “Francis brought a dog home with him, too,” she said as she took one of the baskets and began lining it with green straw. “A perfectly mammoth setter. You know how huge they are. And so beautiful and so dumb!”

  Miss Avery nodded, out of politeness. One dog was much like another so far as she was concerned.

  “The boy it belonged to got a job somewhere,” Mrs. Whitehead said, choosing first a yellow chicken from the pile in front of her, then a rabbit, and then a white chicken small enough to fasten on the rim of the basket. “Boston, I think it was.”

  “Providence,” Francis said from the doorway. He came in and sat down quietly and stretched his long legs out in front of him. His hair was still wet, but it was combed neatly back from his ears. He had flannel trousers on, and a white shirt, and an old tweed coat. He was also wearing heavy leather boots that were laced as far as his ankles and came halfway up his shins. Miss Avery let her eyes wander from boots to coat, to the right-hand pocket of the coat, which had been ripped open by accident last fall when Francis was home for Thanksgiving. The cloth had been torn a little, too, but it was all right now, Miss Avery decided. She had made it as good as new.

  “Providence, then,” Mrs. Whitehead was saying. “Anyway, they had the dog in their dormitory all year and this boy couldn’t take it to work with him, so Francis brought it home, without saying a word to anybody. Red, his name is. And I give you my word, he’s as big as a pony. All morning long he’s been going around knocking things over, tracking dirt in and out, stealing meat off the kitchen table — all the things boys do in college, I’m sure.” She looked at Francis slyly. “And then every time he does something wrong, he comes and apologizes with those great brown eyes of his until I really don’t think I can stand it much longer.”

  Francis drew himself up into his chair. “You exaggerate something awful,” he said.

  Mrs. Whitehead looked at Miss Avery. “It isn’t so,” she said meekly. “Is it, Miss Avery? Francis is always saying that I exaggerate.” She turned to Francis. “Miss Avery’s mother exaggerates, too, Francis, even with her hardening of the arteries.” Then back to Miss Avery: “Though I never heard her do it, you understand. I daresay all mothers exaggerate.” She looked from one to the other of them and then burst into laughter. “Miss Avery takes me so seriously,” she said. “She always did. She never changes a bit. We’re the ones who have changed, Francis. There’s not one piece of ginger in the house.”

  She held the Easter basket off, admiring it from this angle and that. Then she put it aside and began on another one, which she lined with yellow straw. Before she had finished the second basket, the maid appeared in the doorway, carrying a wide silver tea tray. The dog followed after her, sniffing. “Annie, how nice of you to think of tea,” said Mrs. Whitehead. When Annie tried to put the tray down, the dog came forward, blocking her way completely. Mrs. Whitehead was plunged into despair. “You see, Francis?” she said.

  Francis rose and took hold of the dog’s collar. “Red,” he exclaimed fondly, “did anyone ever tell you you were a nuisance?” and dragged the dog out of the room.

  “Don’t put him in the pantry,” Mrs. Whitehead called. Then she turned to Miss Avery again. “He can open the swinging door with his paw. Besides, he’ll just be there for Annie to fall over.”

  From where Miss Avery sat, she could see into the front hall. Francis was whirling the dog round and round by his front legs and saying “Swing, you crazy dog, swing, swing!”

/>   “Francis is going to leave school,” Mrs. Whitehead said. “Last summer nothing would do but he must learn to walk the tightrope. Now he wants to leave school.” She began arranging the teacups absentmindedly in their saucers. “He intends to go back and take his examinations in June. Then he’s going to stop. I’ve talked until I’m blue in the face and it makes no difference to him. Not the slightest.… What kind of sandwiches are there, Annie?”

  “Cream cheese,” Annie said, “and guava jelly, and hot cross buns.”

  “Hot cross buns!” Francis said, coming back into the room. “Do you hear that, Mother?”

  Mrs. Whitehead looked at him disapprovingly as he sat down. “The way you twist Annie around your little finger! I don’t know what I’ll do when you come home to stay.”

  Francis bent over, and having folded the cuffs of his trousers inside his boots, continued lacing them. “I’m not coming home to stay,” he said, with his chin between his knees.

  For a moment the room was absolutely still. Without looking at her son, Mrs. Whitehead put the tea strainer on the tray where the plate of lemon had been, reflected, and changed them back again. “Sugar?” she said to Miss Avery.

  “If you please,” Miss Avery said.

  Annie brought her tea and the plate of sandwiches, the plate of hot cross buns. When Francis also had been taken care of, Annie waited to see whether Mrs. Whitehead wanted anything else of her and then withdrew from the room. Francis went on lacing his boots. After he had finished, he adjusted his trousers so that they hung over like ski pants. Then, quite by accident, he discovered his cup of tea. Nobody spoke. The dog returned, making soft, padded noises on the hardwood floor. Miss Avery thought that Mrs. Whitehead would probably object and that Francis would have to take hold of Red and drag him out again, but it was not that way at all. The dog came and put his head on Mrs. Whitehead’s lap and she began to stroke his long, red ears.

  “If you’re not coming here, Francis,” she said suddenly, “where do you intend to go?”

  “New York.”

  “Why New York?” Mrs. Whitehead asked.

  “I want to get a job,” Francis said, and pulled a hot cross bun to pieces and ate it.

  Mrs. Whitehead watched him as if it were an altogether new sight. When he had finished, she said, “You can get a job right here. There are plenty of jobs. Your Uncle Frank will probably make a place for you.”

  “I don’t wan’t a job in the mill,” Francis said.

  In a spasm of exasperation, Mrs. Whitehead turned away from him and poured herself a second cup of tea. “Really, Francis,” she said, “I don’t know what’s come over you.”

  Miss Avery was ready to get up as soon as she caught Mrs. Whitehead’s eye, and go home. But when Mrs. Whitehead did glance in her direction, Miss Avery saw that she was more than exasperated — that she was frightened also. Her look said that, for a few minutes at least, Miss Avery was not to go; that she was to relax and sit back in her chair.

  “You do what you want, Mother,” Francis said reasonably. “You like to have breakfast in bed, so Annie brings it up to you. I want to do the things I like. I’ve had enough school. I want to begin living, like other people.”

  Mrs. Whitehead pushed the dog’s head out of her lap. “Being grown up isn’t as interesting as you think. Your father and I always hoped that you would study medicine. He talked so much about it during his last illness. But you don’t seem to care for that sort of thing and I suppose there’s no reason why you should be made to go on with your studies if you don’t want to. There are other things to think of, however. I can’t rent this house overnight. People don’t want so large a place, you know. It may take all summer. And you may not like it in New York after you get there. You’ll miss the country and you’ll miss your home and your friends. You may not even be able to keep your car. Had you thought of that?” She waited for him to say something, but he went on intently balancing the heel of one boot on the toe of the other. “We’ll have to take a little apartment somewhere,” she said, “and it’ll be cramped and uncomfortable —”

  “I’m sorry, Moth!” He stood up suddenly, and his voice was strained and uncertain. “When I go to New York I’m going alone,” he said. “I want to lead my own life.” Then he turned and went out of the room, with the dog racing after him.

  WHEN Mrs. Whitehead started talking again, it was not about Francis but something else entirely — a book she had read once long ago. The book was about New Orleans after the Civil War. She had forgotten the tide of it, and she didn’t suppose Miss Avery would remember it either, but it was about a little girl named Dea, who used to carry wax figurines around on a tray in the marketplace and sell them to people from the North.

  Annie came in and carried the tea tray out to the kitchen. When they were alone again, Mrs. Whitehead seemed to have forgotten the book, or else she had said all there was to say about it. The moment had come for Miss Avery to bring forth her handiwork. She went and got the brown-paper parcel and sat down with it on her lap. Her fingers trembled slightly as she pulled the knot apart, and when the wrapping fell open she expected exclamations of approval. There were none. Mrs. Whitehead did not even see the mending. She was sitting straight up in her chair, and her eyes were quite blind and overflowing with tears.

  “Francis is so young,” she said. “Just twenty, you know. Just a boy. And there’s really no reason why he should be in such a rush. Most people live a long time. Longer than they need to.”

  Miss Avery nodded. There was nothing that she could think of to say. She wanted to go home, but she waited until Mrs. Whitehead had found her handkerchief and wiped her eyes and given her nose a little blow and glanced surreptitiously at the clock.

  A Final Report

  IN the matter of the estate of Pearl M. Donald, deceased, who carried me on a pillow when I was a sickly baby, a little over fifty years ago, Probate No. 2762, for many years my mother’s best friend and our next-door neighbor, a beautiful woman with a knife-edge to her voice and a grievance against her husband (What? What on earth could it have been? Everybody loved him): Final report to the Honorable Frank Mattein, Judge of the County Court of Latham County, Illinois: The undersigned, Margaret Wilson, Executor of the Last Will of Pearl M. Donald, deceased, respectfully states: 1. That on or about the 17th day of June, 1961, Pearl M. Donald departed this life … though it was far from easy. It took her almost twenty years of not wanting to live anymore. And if she had been left in her own house, in all that frightful squalor and filth and no air and the odor of cats’ defecation, she might have needed still more time. But when she was carrying me on a pillow it was not a question of when she would die but of whether I would live.

  It is safe to assume that she shared my mother’s fears, comforted her, lied to her — comforting lies, about the way I looked today as compared with the way I looked yesterday; and that at some point she took my mother in her arms and let her cry. Though Aunty Donald lived to be so old, there was no question of her mental competence. She left a will, which was duly approved and admitted to probate. Letters testamentary were duly issued; the executor was duly qualified; an inventory of all estate assets, both real and personal, was filed and approved by the court; notices for the filing of claims were published, as provided by law; and proof of heirship was made, from which it appears that the decedent left her surviving no husband (there is nothing like the law for pointing out what everybody knows) and the following named person as her only heir at law: Agnes Jones, an adult cousin, whom I have never heard of.

  I don’t, of course, remember being carried on the pillow, but I remember the playhouse in Aunty Donald’s back yard. It was made of two upright-piano boxes put together, in the fashion of that period, with windows and a door, and real shingles on the roof. It had belonged to a little girl named Mary King. The Donalds’ house used to be the Kings’. And when I got to be five or six years old, my mother, seeing that I loved the playhouse, which was locked, which I never went in, an
d which I shouldn’t have loved, since I was a little boy and playhouses are for little girls — my mother asked if she could buy the playhouse for me and Aunty Donald said no, she was keeping it for Bun. Bun was her dog — a bulldog. I don’t know whether it was at that point that she stopped being my mother’s best friend (my mother seldom took offense, but when she did it was usually permanent) or whether Aunty Donald said that because she had already stopped being my mother’s best friend. There is so much that children are not told and that it never occurs to them to ask. Anyway, I went on peering through the windows of the locked playhouse at the things Mary King had left behind when the Kings moved away, and hoping that someday the playhouse would be unlocked and I could go inside. Once I heard my mother mention it to my Aunt Annette, and I realized from the tone of her voice that it was a mildly sore subject with her but not taken so seriously that — that what? That I didn’t spend a great many hours in Aunty Donald’s kitchen with the hired girl while my mother and Aunty Donald were talking in the front part of the house. I don’t remember what they talked about. It didn’t interest me, and so I went out to the kitchen, where I could do some of the talking. And in return I even listened. The hired girl’s name was Mae, and she had a child in the state institution for the feeble-minded, on the outskirts of town. She was not feeble-minded herself, but neither was she terribly bright, I suppose. The men joked about her. My father had seen her leaving the Donalds’ house all dressed up, on her afternoon off, and he had not recognized her. From the rear, the men agreed, she was some chicken. When you saw her face, it was a different story. She was about as homely as it is possible to be. Scraggly teeth, a complexion the color of putty, kinky hair, and a slight aura of silliness. What I talked to her about I don’t know. Children never seem to suffer from a lack of things to say. What she talked to me about was the fact that Aunty Donald wouldn’t let her have cream in her coffee. This was half a century ago, when hired girls got four or five dollars a week. At our house nobody ever told the hired girl she couldn’t have what we had. So far as I know. And I seem to remember telling my mother that Aunty wouldn’t let Mae have cream in her coffee, but whether I remember or only think I remember, I undoubtedly did tell my mother this, because I told her everything. It was my way of dealing with facts and with life. The act of telling her made them manageable. I don’t suppose I told her anything about Aunty Donald that she didn’t know already. And she was a very good and loving mother, and didn’t tell me everything by way of making her facts and her life manageable. She just shone on me like the sun, and in spite of my uncertain beginning I grew. I was not as strong as other children, but I came along. I stayed out of the cemetery.