Onions in the Stew

by Betty Macdonald

  Then the ferry came in and Don bought our first commuter’s ticket: car and driver ten rides for $3.70; passengers, ten cents each. Today the fare is ninety cents for a car and driver; twenty-five cents for a passenger—a commuter’s ticket is slightly less.

  Hamburgers in the little lunchroom on the ferry revived us all still further—even Harris, who told us proudly he had drunk a pint of gin while driving the van through the traffic.

  Our new beautiful pewter-colored dream house had no road. This tiny flaw in its perfection, at first candidly spoken of and looked upon as a flaw but so insignificant compared to things like a salt water beach and hand-braided rugs, had during the summer of fluctuation and persuasion somehow emerged as a blessing. No road meant no bores, the Hendersons said. No road meant privacy. No road meant nothing to run over the children and animals. “We don’t want a road,” our neighbors said and are still saying, only each year more faintly, with less conviction. “We don’t want a road, either,” we said bravely that summer when we were negotiating. Then came the day of reckoning and we were faced with the uncomfortable fact that walking the mile and a half from the ferry on a beautiful trail along the water carrying a pound of bacon and a quart of gin is one thing. Hauling in a van load of furniture and possessions is unquestionably another.

  Thank God the civilization-ridden neighbors on the south side of us did have a road. They had a road that was steep and rutted and ended at least two hundred feet from the beach, but they generously offered to let us use it. They also let us use three rowboats and an outboard motor. Don and Harris tied all the boats together and we all loaded them. Harris insisted on steering the lead boat, which was unfortunate, as he seemed possessed with the idea (perhaps because of the pint of gin) that we were moving from Vashon to Seattle and kept heading out to sea, chairs, books and pillows spilling in his wake.

  Harris, though confused, was eager and strong and by nightfall we had most of the stuff on our sea wall, a few things in the house and the washing machine in one of the boats. I invited Harris to dinner, but he pointed out that he had only six inches of beach left before high tide, so Don paid him and he slithered off, the girls waving wildly at his narrow back.

  Then we all staggered wearily up the path to our beautiful new house, which was as cold as a crypt and piled high with junk. While Don and Joanie built roaring, quick-dying carton fires in the kitchen trash burner and the fireplaces, Anne and I pawed feverishly through boxes looking for the food. The night before, feeling just like Mamsie Pepper, I had baked a ham and a pot of beans and had wrapped the stuff for salad in a damp dishtowel, “so that everything will be ready and cozy for moving day,” I told Don. But where were they? They certainly were not in this old box of pictures—or this one of vases or this . . . After almost an hour of fruitless search we decided that they might still be on the sea wall. I took Tudor and a flashlight and went down.

  Even though my neck, my back, my arms, my legs and my palms ached and with each step on the path little jagged pains ran down my earlobes, I still experienced a wonderful feeling of security as I realized that this was our path and I was going down to look for our ham on our sea wall.

  When I got down to the sea wall I had another surge of emotion as I listened to the waves slopping against the wooden pilings and realized that the tide was in and so these were our waves because Mr. Henderson had explained that we owned the tidelands too.

  I flashed the light over the heaps of boxes and trunks piled higgledy-piggledy all over the sea wall, hoping against hope that I had marked the box of food or that, if I hadn’t, in some mysterious way the ham would make its presence known. I hadn’t and it didn’t, so I called Tudor.

  “Here, boy,” I said kindly. “Here, Tudor, boy.” As I have said Tudor was my mother’s dog and as I had heard my mother, who is a dog lover and a better-than-average veterinary, say a million times that a dog should be well trained, that it is not fair to the dog, and, as I hadn’t been around Tudor too much, I presumed that I might get a little co-operation from him. A little of the man’s best friend, old dog Tray stuff. I called again with even more kindness.

  “Here, Tudor, old boy.” Tudor, who was busy sniffing a rock, absolutely ignored me. “Tudor,” I said rather sharply. Instantly he flattened himself on the ground, buried his head in his paws and awaited a blow.

  I sweetened my voice again. “Tudor, old boy,” I said, trying to speak just loud enough to be heard over the waves but not loud enough to frighten the little stinker. “Tudor, old boy, food! Good food! Find it, boy!” I patted the piles of boxes and trunks enthusiastically. Tudor raised his head, gave me a long disdainful look, then ran up the path to the house.

  Tudor was no help but he had given me an idea. I began to sniff the boxes myself. It was not easy to get a true scent over and above the salt water and the rich rotten cabbage smell of the Tacoma pulp mill which occasionally rides in on the south wind, but I finally found the ham. It was under “Books—reference” and on top of “Living room draperies.”

  I insisted on setting the big pine table in the north corner of the living room and lighting the candles, but we ate clustered crossly around the fire. October nights on the salt water are penetratingly chilly.

  After dinner while Anne and Joan washed the dishes in our new sink, which fact did not seem to lift their low opinion of this drudgery, Don and I made up the beds. When we went to find the blankets and sheets I thanked God for that short-lived spurt of efficiency—the boxes were clearly marked: “Blankets—raspberry jam—bathing suits—bed linen.”

  A fireplace in a bedroom is a very luxurious item. Even poking tired feet down into the icy reaches of clean sheets—“Teach me to live, that I may dread the grave as little as my bed”—is not so painful when at the same time you are looking into a merrily crackling fire.

  After we had turned out the lights, Don and I watched the leaping shadows on the pine ceiling and listened to Anne and Joan’s childish trebles murmuring insults to each other through the walls of their adjoining bedrooms. The wind had freshened and was making small plaintive noises in the eaves. The bed was very comfortable. I sighed deeply, contentedly, and closed my eyes. Then suddenly I was aware that in addition to the crackle of our fire, the slosh of our waves, the moan of the wind under our eaves, the haggling of our children, I was listening to rain on our roof.

  Fumbling for the bedlight I said wearily to Don, “Do you hear that? It’s raining.”

  Don said, “Swhat?”

  I said, “Rain. Listen, it’s raining and the books and records are still down on the sea wall.”

  Sighing heavily, Don sat up and reached for his bathrobe. I got up and put mine on. Hearing sounds of activity from our bedroom the girls called out in the owlish way of children, “Who? What? Who? Where? Who? Who? Who?”

  I explained over my shoulder as I ran down the stairs and out onto the porch where we had dumped the tarpaulins. Snatching up a couple I started down the path—Don followed with the flashlight. The rain was brisk and wet. After we had tucked the tarpaulins over and around the boxes and trunks, Don flashed the light on the washing machine defiantly spraddled in the rowboat. The waves were almost washing over the stern. “Come on,” he said without enthusiasm, “we’ll have to try and pull the boat up the steps.” I jerked on the rope and he jerked on the washing machine and we managed finally to get the prow onto the top step, the stern in the water, the washing machine veering dangerously toward the south. Grimly tying the painter to a slender maple tree Don said, “‘An’ lea’e us nought but grief and pain, for promis’d joy.’”

  Busy threading my bathrobe cord through the oarlocks and then over and under the wringer in the vain hope that I could keep the washing machine in the rowboat but knowing very well it was like trying to restrain a wounded buffalo with a piece of thread, I snarled and said, “And I used to wonder why they sold the house furnished.”

  By the time we got back to bed, the crackling fire in the fireplace had burned to co
als, but it was still comforting and a delight after the chilly interlude on the sea wall in the rain.

  From far across the water a freighter tooted. The rain on the roof sounded like millions of birds’ feet. I said to Don, “Well, here we are, all together at last in our own house.”

  Don said, “Unk.” He was very tired. With a snap the last piece of wood broke apart. The glow from the fireplace was very faint now. The noise of the Sound less of the slurp, slop, splash and more of a rhythmic thrummmmmm, like a drum roll, showed that the little waves had matured to good-sized swells. “A heavenly sound,” I thought sleepily.

  Then above the wind, the rain and the surf I thought I detected a heavy groaning scraping noise.

  “The washing machine,” Don said suddenly, loudly, in my ear. “The little bastard is still trying to get away.”

  CHAPTER IV

  LIFE AS USUAL IN A VERY UNUSUAL SETTING

  ANY change as drastic as moving from the city to an island should be accomplished gradually, like reducing. But there was old La Guerre as well as time and tide, which were no longer merely figures of speech, and suddenly we were up to our chins in a new life and with one day to adjust.

  To make the move, Don and I had taken Friday and Monday off, and in addition I had begged and been grudgingly granted a special dispensation from the “big boss” to eat my lunch in half an hour and not be at my desk until eight instead of regular wartime seven-thirty. Don having finally finished his stint on the night shift, now had to be at work at the enchanting hour of six-thirty A. M. The children kept assuring us that they could stay away from school for months, even years—“Everybody does when they move,” but Don and I callously advised them that as long as we had to go back to work, we were enrolling them in school on Monday. “Yes, Monday! This Monday. Because we want you to learn something. Because people who don’t go to school are dummies. Of course, I don’t think Abraham Lincoln was a dummy,” and so on, and so on.

  We had moved Saturday. That gave us Sunday to unpack, put away, look around, plan ahead and get wood. Sunday morning when I got up later, tireder and nastier than I had planned, I found that the washing machine had gotten away after all. Joan and Don with their irritating early-morning cheerfulness and 20-20 vision had spotted it riding the waves halfway to Three Tree Point, directly across from us.

  “See,” they told Anne and me after they had dragged us out on the porch, “there it is, right there by that white streak.”

  “I’m cold,” Anne said. “Let’s go in the house and start the fire.”

  Joan said, “Can’t you even see the rowboat?”

  “No,” Anne said, huddling her arms around her.

  “You’re not trying,” Joan said. “Now look right across the Sound at that bare place on the hill.”

  Don said cheerfully, “The water’s awfully rough out there. I can see huge whitecaps. Let’s row out now before breakfast.”

  “I’m not going any place until I have a cup of coffee,” I said crossly.

  “I’m not either,” Anne said. “Only I’m going to have cocoa. Let’s start the fire.”

  “Ah, come on, Mommy,” Joan said. “A boat ride before breakfast would be fun.”

  “Why don’t you and Joan go,” I said to Don, “and Anne and I will get breakfast.”

  “Yes,” Anne said eagerly to Joan. “You and Don go and Mommy and I will have breakfast all ready when you get back.”

  “We’ll all have to go,” Don said. “Towing that washing machine in that rough water is going to be very ticklish business.”

  So we had breakfast first and after my second cup of coffee I became mildly enthusiastic about the boat trip. “Hurry with your cocoa, Andy,” I said brightly. “We’re going for our very first boat ride.”

  “Does Don know how to row?” Anne said suspiciously.

  “Of course,” I said. “Don’t you, Don?”

  “Well, I haven’t had too much experience with boats,” Don said truthfully, “but I can manage, I guess.”

  “Can you swim?” I asked him.

  “I would be able to,” he said, “if my bones weren’t so heavy. I always sink.”

  I looked out at the Sound again. The water in the middle looked much rougher and several large dark clouds grumbled menacingly as they shoved and pushed each other around directly overhead. I poured myself another cup of coffee.

  “Oh, Mommy,” Joan said, “we’ll never get started.”

  “This may be the last cup of coffee I’ll ever have,” I said, “and I intend to enjoy it.”

  “You may as well pour me one too,” Don said, sighing resignedly.

  “Well, I’m going down and get the boat in the water,” Joan said.

  “Go ahead,” Anne said. “I’m going to make myself another piece of cinnamon toast.”

  “Why don’t you get one of the neighbors to help you?” I said, peering past the pink geraniums in the window box toward the horizon. “If that speck I see out there is the rowboat with the washing machine in it, it’s halfway to Alaska.”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Don said. “People row across the Sound all the time. It won’t take us long.”

  “I wish we had life jackets,” I said.

  “Oh, Betty,” Anne said, suddenly switching loyalty in the irritating way children do, “don’t be silly. Joan and I are wonderful swimmers. We could probably swim across the Sound. Anyway Don can handle the boat. Come on, let’s go before it starts to rain again. I’ll eat my toast in the boat.”

  When we got to the beach Joan had the big rowboat in the water and was splashily rowing up and down in front of the sea wall. We called to her to come in and after Don had pulled the boat on to the beach with a tremendous jerk that sent Joan, who was about to stand up, sprawling and lost an oar overboard, we all climbed in and began arguing about who was to sit where.

  There was a great deal of unnecessary talk about my tremendous weight and how if I sat on one side with only one of the girls’ meager flyweight to balance me, the boat would tip over. This could have been easily solved by my sitting in the prow but that was a favorite spot and both girls wanted it. They finally agreed to take turns, so that when we were in the middle of the Sound in rough water, they vigorously crowded past Don and the oars, rocked the boat dangerously and kicked me in the ankles while they changed seats.

  Don was not very adept at the oars. He blamed it on “these damned old oars which keep slipping out of the oarlocks,” but Joan informed him tactlessly that he didn’t hold the blades straight, he should dip deeper, he was rowing too hard with his right oar and he was getting everybody wet. She had learned everything about rowing at Aunty Dede’s and she would be glad to help him.

  Anne announced that she had learned everything about rowing on Lake Washington where she and Marilyn rowed the dinghy of Marilyn’s father’s “enormous speedy cruiser.” She told Don he was dipping too deep, he was holding the blades too straight, but it was all right for him to row so hard with his right oar because it would turn us around and we could see where we were going. I, who had been rowing since I was five years old and, in addition, had seen all the Washington crew races, and really did know everything about rowing, kept my mouth shut because I have never cared for this sport and was not anxious to take the oars. With set lips, Don continued to dip and pull and splash toward the washing machine, which finally even Anne and I could see.

  Like a stout gray lady on an excursion boat, it had slid up and wedged itself in the prow of the rowboat, from which position it stolidly watched our maneuvers to ease alongside and get the painter. This was not too easy as the water was very choppy and the painter was tangled around the washing machine’s legs. In his attempt to lift the washing machine and untangle the rope, Don leaned so hard on the side of our boat we dipped water.

  Anne immediately began to shriek, “We’re tipping over! We’re sinking! Help! Help!”

  Joan stood up and shouted, “Watch out, everybody, I’m going to get in the other boat!”
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br />   I yelled, “Don’t get in the other boat, Joan! Shut up, Anne! Don, be careful!” and Don said, “EVERYBODY BE QUIET!” just as the black clouds above us released large wet raindrops, which began splatting on our heads.

  Joan said, “Please, Mommy, let me get in the other boat. I can hand you the rope.”

  Don said, “Okay, Joanie, but wait until I steady the boat.”

  I said, “Don, don’t let her! The washing machine will come loose and squash her and what if we can’t get the rope and she drifts away?”

  “Don’t be silly,” Don said. “Okay, Joanie, here you go.” Nimbly Joan jumped into the stern of the other boat which was clear up out of the water owing to the weight of the washing machine, skipped down to the prow, crawled under the washing machine and fed the painter out the small opening between the wringer and the point of the prow. I grabbed the rope and yelled at her to “get out from under that washing machine right now!” She did, announcing unconcernedly as she jumped back into our boat, “It was caught on that faucet on the side and here’s your bathrobe cord.”

  As soon as we started rowing back toward home, the washing machine became unwedged and slid down and leaned over the starboard side, thus making it as difficult as possible to tow. Of course Joan wanted to get back in the boat and try to push it into the prow again, but even Don vetoed this. We finally reached shore, the washing machine defiant and unco-operative all the way, and when we tried to maneuver it up the narrow trail to the house, it weighed just as much as possible and kept flinging its wringer around its head like a billy club.

  When we had it comfortably installed in the service room, the girls insisted that I test it out. I filled it with water, threw in some dishtowels and turned it on and it swirled and swished very efficiently.

  Joan said, “I’m certainly glad it works because I didn’t pack anything but dirty clothes.”