In spite of the slugs, moths and WooWoos, I have found nothing that gives me such a sense of accomplishment or peace as gardening—no matter how vigorously I attack it. I’m sure I couldn’t have survived either literary success or Anne and Joan’s adolescence without it. My favorite time to garden is in early April during one of the feathery warm spring rains when weeds are easy to uproot and the earth has a rich leafy mushroomy smell.
Of course the minute I showed interest in gardening I ran into the Garden-Club-Latin-Namers. “Gosh, what pretty red nasturtiums,” I said.
“Oh, you must mean my Tropaeoleum majus?” the Latin-Namer answered with a condescending little laugh.
The secret thing I have found out about the Latin-Namers is that very few of them have gardens. “Too busy with my Garden Clubs,” one told me last spring when she came up to borrow some flowers for their meeting.
CHAPTER VIII
CIRRIPEDS NOT WANTED
BEFORE embarking on it, my conception of life on an island was much the same as my conception of life in a submarine. I imagined that everybody did everything together all the time. I had visions of jelly-making bees, community suppers, wild blackberry expeditions, sharing the woodcutting and so on. All erroneous. At least for us year-rounders. The summer people, those mothlike creatures with their unreal attitude toward winter and their urban love of urban pursuits, such as having fun, are exceptions. They see a great deal of each other; in fact, as one woman put it, “are in each other’s armpits twenty-four hours a day.” The rest of us go along for weeks, months, even years, thinking of each other, intending to get together but not quite making it unless we happen to board the same ferry.
The other day I ran into what I consider a close friend on the ferry. I said, “Oh, and you have the new baby with you. I’ve been dying to see her,” and she said, “You must mean Marilyn, Betty. She started to school yesterday. This is Johnny and I guess you missed Larry altogether. Too bad I left him home with Mother.” She knew that I have been busy and obviously she has too.
This is not due to any unfriendliness at all. It is due to unseen forces such as the bark tide which kept Don and me from making our semi-yearly visit to the house of charming neighbors who live way down the beach—nine houses. Boiling over with friendliness and good intentions we left the house one sunny October afternoon.
“I understand that Julia’s chrysanthemums are simply magnificent this year,” I said to Don as we started down the path. “I wonder how George is coming with his gold mine,” Don said. George had begun on the mine six years before and it never occurred to either of us that the vein could have run out since we had seen him last. Anyway we got as far as the sea wall, then we saw it. The most magnificent bark tide of the year. From Dolphin Point clear past the old dock, huge brown slabs of bark lay along the water’s edge in the sunshine, like seals. Even people invited to dinner don’t pass up bark tides like that one, so we rushed back to the house for our canvas bark bags and gloves and got to work. Hours later our beach was clean, the sea wall was piled high and we were too tired to go anywhere but home. However, as we worked we did stop occasionally to wave at our neighbors who like sandpipers could be seen darting around on their beaches gathering up the bonanza. A doctor, an insurance man, a lawyer, a shipbuilder, a banker, a newspaper publisher, all enjoying for an hour or two the same goal.
Vashon Island’s population is spread over its surface in small clusters like fly eggs. Each small community has a name, Robinwood Beach, Tahlequah, Burton, Dilworth Point, Cove, Paradise Cove, Shawnee, Magnolia Beach, Portage, Glen Acres, Ellisport, Lisabeula, Colvos, Vashon Heights, Paradise Valley, Luana Beach, Sylvan Beach, Bethel Park, Klahanie Beach, Docton, Sunrise Ridge, Cedarhurst, Dolphin Point (ours), Scales Corner (all I can remember at this time) and the town of Vashon itself. Quite naturally each community believes that its residents are the most refined, most intelligent, most desirable, its beach the finest, its view of Mount Rainier or the Olympics the most spectacular, its clams the sweetest. Such illusions sponsor contentment, are harmless and will no doubt persist until the floating bridge from Seattle is built and the whole world can see that Dolphin Point is the loveliest spot on Vashon Island, which explains why it has been settled by such a brilliant, talented, enchanting group of people.
For the first few years after we moved to the beach, we had only one year-round neighbor, the Russells. They bought their house the same year we did, and also, as we did, worked and commuted. During those first years we were drawn together by mutual hardships—the snow, no lights, no road, the terrible telephone service, getting enough wood, storms, walking the trail—and mutual enjoyments—Anne and Joan (they have no children), gardening, cooking, eating, the beach, clams, knitting, driftwood, reading, and living on an island.
The Russells were neighbors in the true, old-fashioned, almost forgotten, calf’s-foot-jelly sense of the word. A plate never returned empty. Tea and cucumber sandwiches in the afternoon. Half of a fresh cake left on the kitchen table. Hand-knitted Angora socks for the girls. Help with a creosote log, chicken broth for the ailing. “I’m rowing to the store, what can I get you?” It is a sad thing that the pace of today’s living has done so much to eliminate this graceful way of life. To us the word “neighbor” is a warm tangible thing instead of merely nomenclature for the house next door.
As time went on and their children finished school, other summer people girded up their loins and became year-rounders. Now, even on the stormiest nights, nights when the wind grabs the giant firs and shakes them until their cones rattle on the roof like pebbles, the clouds explode with rain and the waves attack the sea walls like charging bulls, we can look along our curve of beach and count seven lighted houses, seven beacons of friendship.
As I have said, it takes a certain native hardiness to enjoy living on an island. This hardiness is not always evident but comes to the surface during crises. Take the case of our neighbor with four large grown married sons. She is small and dainty and looks younger than her daughters-in-law but has been known to move a half-ton rock or haul manure three miles when necessary for her garden. She is also noted for not resorting to the barrel of a shotgun in her mouth or any other coward’s way out, that time during the war and rationing when her youngest son brought the entire high school football team out for the weekend, supplemented only by a box of candy which they immediately ate. And what do you think of a woman who can entertain an entire Campfire Group for a long rainy weekend in a small servantless house and somebody left the bag containing the weenies and marsh-mallows on the dock? This same woman, who is my favorite neighbor, asked for and got six grandchildren under six years old for two weeks. Her magic formula for dealing with children is ignoring all faults and accenting tiny virtues. She says, “Instead of telling Tommy day in and day out that he is the naughtiest boy in the United States of America, which could very well be true, take an aspirin and comment on his neatly tied shoes. Almost anybody would rather be known for expert shoe-tying than for kicking the cat.” She always tells whiners how charming they are—bullies how brave—bad sports how good—sneaks how honest! This formula also works on husbands but often requires in addition to the blind eye something stronger than aspirin.
For several summers our beach rang with the laughter and other noises of twenty-eight children under twelve. Now most of those are grown but a large new generation is gaining ground rapidly. Next summer in this house alone we should have six under five, and by adding nephews and nieces, ten or eleven of which I can produce at the drop of a hat or the bars, it is a certainty we can hold up our end.
Down by the point there is a fine big family with nine children, most of whom are married and have children of their own. The fourth from the top or from the bottom, I am not sure which, with her husband and three children has recently become a year-rounder. She has deep dimples and many talents, not the least of which is the ability to smile when thirty-eight relatives with children arrive for the weekend.
I
sland men are really hardier than island women, especially those enduring the daily grind of commuting, supplemented by walking a small narrow slippery trail in the rain. On occasion, particularly after an earthquake or wild storm, walking the trail is an adventure. Sometimes when you round a curve you find the trail has slid off the face of the hill and is crouched at the bottom of a ravine twenty or thirty feet below, and you have to make your precarious way across the face of an oozing clay bank. Other times you suddenly come on mudslides, collapsed bridges or big trees across the path. Once when I was working in town and running the trail in the early morning, an enormous alder fell between me and a neighbor about ten feet ahead of me. We might both have been killed. I remember feeling only surprise because, though it was raining, a fine misty rain, there wasn’t a breath of wind. I also remember that the tree, which was over two feet in diameter at the butt, didn’t make a sound until it hit the ground. Then it merely sighed and rustled like a rheumatic old lady stretching out on the couch.
On weekends an island man cuts wood, goes fishing, paints his name on his sea wall, mends the downspouts, shoots at bottles, gathers bark, prunes the apple trees, baits the rat traps, tends the outboard motor, calks the rowboat, puts out the crab trap, makes a pitcher of martinis, sits in his car in front of the grocery store reading Popular Mechanics while his wife does the weekly shopping, gets a haircut, discusses politics and the weather. The percentage who do nothing but get drunk and hit their wives is slightly smaller than in Seattle across the way. This is attributable to the invigorating yet sobering effect of salt air.
We didn’t meet all of the regular inhabitants of our beach for several years as all the boys, one of the girls, and many of the men were in the service. During this period some of the houses were rented. Most of the renters were transient, both in location, occupation and attitude, and though we were moderately friendly, I cannot easily recall their faces or their names. I remember a few scattered incidents.
The time Joan and Anne baby-sat for a woman with three small children and she called me, sobbing hysterically, and said they had eaten up thirteen red points. When grilled they admitted to cocoa, Spam sandwiches with sweet pickles and a plate of fudge. Their defense was that they were hungry, had shared this bacchanalia with Mrs. Hemingway’s children, and she had only given them twenty-five cents for hours and hours of tremendous physical labor—carrying those sandwiches to and from the couch. I replaced the Spam, butter, sweet pickles, cocoa, sugar, chocolate and nuts, and contemplated also giving Mrs. Hemingway, obviously a virgin in this respect, a few facts of life regarding baby-sitters. But as she was rather ungracious about the supplies, I held back on the baby-sitting advice, reasoning that she deserved to learn the hard way that all baby-sitters are part boa constrictor and anything you don’t want eaten should be studded with mouse traps or locked up.
I also remember beautiful little dark-eyed Mary who lived (well, really rested) on the beach for a month or two. She was frail, she said, and her chest hurt if she carried anything heavy. One rainy evening she and her husband, Wesley, and Don and I came home on the same ferry. We stopped at the store, and I bought two enormous shopping bags of groceries. In addition we picked up the laundry, the mail, which was filled with stout magazines, and the milk. I had a shopping bag which must have weighed fifty pounds, my green office bag, the mail, and a bundle of laundry. Don had the other heavier shopping bag, his lunch box and the milk. Wesley had a shopping bag, his lunch bucket and their milk. Mary had her purse and a small loaf of white bread, sliced. When we stopped to rest at the “big tree,” my hands, which were a deep purple, wouldn’t let go of my bags and Don had to pry them loose, like separating a suicide from his pistol.
When we had all had a cigarette and were ready to go again, Mary said, “Wesley, honey, you’ll have to carry my purse and the bread, my chest hurts.”
Wesley said, “I can’t, honey, my hands are full.”
Then Don said, and his voice oozed concern and tenderness, “Here let me take your stuff. I’ll put it in my shopping bag.”
I said, “My chest hurts too and so do my hands and my legs and my stomach and my head.”
Mary and Wesley laughed but Don gave me a disappointed look, which just goes to show that the hurty chests of this world are the smart ones and us good sports deserve the big shopping bags we always get.
When I say I cannot remember the war renters I am excepting Lesley Arnold, who, in addition to a husband in the Navy and thirty-one coats, including one lined with real leopard and a full-back wild mink, had large purple eyes which she seemed to keep focused on Don.
It was our first spring on the island I was painting the porch furniture and humming and being happy and trying not to care that I worked harder than anyone in the whole world and was apparently also going to be buried in my tan knitted suit. I love to do things like painting porch furniture on a spring day, or licking bookplates on a rainy day. I am a true homebody, a domestic woman who will fight like a tiger for her children, her man or the last leg of lamb in the butcher shop. My favorite song is “You’re Mine, You.”
I had just made the discovery that the word “folding,” stamped on the bottom of the captain’s chairs I was painting, meant “with a hammer” when Anne and Joan came bounding in and announced breathlessly that some new people named Arnold had moved to Vashon and “Mrs. Arnold is about your age only awfully pretty with beautiful clothes,” Anne said. “She gave us a Coke and they are just moving and her husband is in California so I invited her to dinner. Her name is Lesley and she said we could call her it. She’s adorable, Betty, and she’s brown and has a perfect figure.”
A strange chilly premonition, like one of those small unexplained riffles on smooth water, swept over me. However, I said, “How nice. What time did you tell her to come?”
“I didn’t tell her any time,” Anne said. “I just said dinner. What smells so awful, dinner?”
“Turpentine,” I said. “I’ll call Mrs. Arnold.”
A gust of wind slipped under the newspapers I had spread on the porch, lifted them up and began folding them around the freshly painted chairs like wrappings. “Oh, damn!” I said, slapping furiously at the papers.
“You’ve got white paint in your hair,” Joan said.
Anne said, “What are you going to wear tonight, Mommy?”
“I hadn’t thought,” I said. “But undoubtedly my tan knitted suit.”
“What are we going to have to eat?” Joan asked.
“Oxtails,” I said. “I’ve already got them in.”
“Oxtails!” Anne wailed. “Why don’t we have fried chicken? Marilyn’s mother always has fried chicken when she has company.”
“Because,” I said rather crossly, “I’ve got oxtails already in the oven. Anyway, they are delicious and I cook them better than anybody.”
“But oxtails sound so cheap,” Anne said. “And they’re so gluey.”
“That’s the best part,” Joan said.
“What else are we going to have?” Anne asked.
“I was planning on having oxtails with carrots and mushrooms, mashed potatoes because the gravy is so good, green salad with olive oil and lemon juice and that fruit stuff made with bananas and oranges and pineapple and coconut.”
“I’ll make an angel food cake,” Anne said.
“You can’t. Not enough eggs,” I said. “Anyway we won’t need cake. Oxtails are filling and fruit is all we will want for dessert.”
“Please, Betty, let me make a cake,” Anne said.
“Go on, Betty, let her,” Joan said. “Only make a devil’s food with four layers, Anne.”
“If you want to cook, why don’t you bake some oatmeal cookies,” I said to Anne. “I think we have both raisins and nuts.”
“Sure,” Joan said. “I’ll help.”
“Eat them, you mean,” Anne said.
“What time is it?” I asked. “Joanie, run in and look at the kitchen clock.”
From the kitchen Joan c
alled out, “Quarter to five.”
I stood up and stretched. Anne said, “Maybe I’d better just fix the fruit. I wish we had a fresh pineapple and a real coconut.”
“It’ll be just as good without,” I said. “Put some fresh mint in it. I’m going in and call Mrs. Arnold.”
Lesley Arnold’s voice was husky to that fascinating point just short of asthma. She was easy and absolutely sure of herself. She said she’d love to come to dinner and couldn’t she come early and help. With that tiny laugh with which women indicate that they are so well organized they have had everything done since four that morning, I said no, but to come early and have a martini.
She said, “Anne and Joan are so adorable. I do hope they’ll be home.”
“They will,” I said. “They think you are beautiful and glamorous and can hardly wait to see you.”
“The lambs,” she said. “I’ll be over in a while.”
I went upstairs, took a bath, mostly with turpentine to get the white paint off my legs and arms and hair and neck, put on my tan knitted suit, lots of perfume, heavy gold jewelry and heavy makeup. When I came into the kitchen Joan said, “Wow, your eyebrows are dark!”
Anne said, “I think you look glamorous but I wish you’d wear more eyeshadow. Charm magazine says that everybody should wear eyeshadow even in the daytime.”
“Even on the beach?” I asked.
“Of course,” Anne said. “I’m going to wear eyeshadow with my bathing suit this summer.”
“I’m not,” Joan said.
“No, you’ll probably wear filth and blackberry stains,” Anne said.
I said quickly, “Joanie, you set the table, while I make the martinis.”
Anne said, “I’ll set the table; Joan, you make the living room fire.”
“Oh, sure,” Joan said, “‘I’ll light the candles; Joanie, you carry up a thousand-pound log.’”
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