Onions in the Stew

by Betty Macdonald

  “What’s all this loose talk about logs?” Don said from the doorway.

  Lesley Arnold was so beautiful she made me slightly sick at my stomach. She had large purple, really purple, eyes, small regular features, glistening white teeth, and hair, the color of unbleached muslin, pulled severely back and held with a large tortoise-shell barrette. Her skin was the color of good bourbon. She had on a goldy brown, sleeveless, glazed-chintz dress, cut very low, a gold cashmere sweater, huge topaz-and-diamond earrings and three heavy topaz-and-diamond bracelets. Her slender brown feet were wrapped in natural leather thongs. She made me feel just like a hygiene teacher. A hot hygiene teacher in an ugly tan knitted suit, the wrong shoes and no husband.

  Don, my honest, blunt Scotsman, was so dashing (drooling?) that even the girls were impressed. After dinner some of the beach people came up and we drank highballs, played records, recorded our own squeaky voices and were terribly gay until after three o’clock. Lesley was certainly very very attractive. At least I thought so until she pushed me up against the icebox and said, “I’ve asked your big handsome husband to walk me home—do you mind?”

  “Help yourself—take two,” I said, my eyes on the dripping ice tray I was holding.

  “Can I have a kiss, too?” she said.

  “Why don’t you ask him?” I said.

  By the time Don got home I had washed the dishes, emptied all the ashtrays, even vacuumed. (I didn’t want anybody getting up in court and saying I hadn’t done my share.) Don said, “I hurried as fast as I could.”

  “Those things take time,” I said.

  “What things?” he asked.

  “Things like kissing Lesley,” I said.

  “Oh, that,” Don said. “She asked me to kiss her so I pecked her on the cheek.”

  We were all supposed to go to Lesley’s for breakfast the next morning and then to someone else’s house for sandwiches. But somehow or another I was making clam fritters at eleven in the morning and hamburgers at four in the afternoon and, in between, Lesley took everybody, especially the men, down to her house while I cleaned up the mess and made things attractive again. I was spreading relish on a bun when they came back the second time, Don carrying a bottle of Scotch which Lesley said was a consolation prize for me. I may have been a little curt because she said, “Why, Betty, I believe you’re jealous.”

  “Jealous?” I said. “Of course I’m not.”

  Anne, who had been helping me said, “But she is jealous. She’s mad because you asked Don to kiss you and Joan and I are too.” Her eyes were blazing.

  Lesley put her arm around Anne and said, “Why, baby, Betty and I were just joking. She’s not jealous of me. You and Joanie bring your hamburgers and come sit by me.” And lucky old unjealous Mommy got to cook them.

  Then there is the night Anne and Joan were staying all night in town and Don and I planned to have dinner at the Alibi, the Vashon restaurant, and go to the Vashon movie show. We were sitting in the kitchen having an old-fashioned and discussing this fabulous outing when Lesley called and said she was all alone and wouldn’t we come down. I said that we were going out to dinner. She said come down for a drink then as she was all alone. I said we were already having a drink. She said she was all alone and Johnny wasn’t coming home until the next Wednesday and wouldn’t we please. It was a nasty rainy night and I felt sorry for her all alone so, like a fool, I asked her to have dinner and go to the show with us. She said she would, but only if we would come down to her house and have a drink. So we went and she had on black velvet slacks and a black cashmere sweater and diamonds and French perfume and the minute we walked in she told Don how tired he looked, how terribly tired, how absolutely worn out. Of course Don was glad to lie down on the couch, especially when she put a bottle of House of Lords Scotch within easy reach. This time she made me feel like a great big botany teacher in tweeds and without a husband.

  After she had been gay, Don had been tired and I’d been uncomfortable for about an hour, I said, “Come on, let’s go. I’m starving and the show starts at eight-ten.”

  “Show?” Lesley said. “What show?”

  “The movie show at Vashon,” I said. “I told you on the phone we were going.”

  She said, “But, Betty, it’s a terrible night and Don is so tired.”

  I said, “Don promised to take me to the show.”

  “What’s playing?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” I said sulkily.

  “Now, Betty,” she said, “be reasonable. Don is tired, terribly tired. You don’t want to drag him out into the rain and cold just to see any old movie.”

  “I do too,” I said.

  Lesley laughed and said, “Oh, Betty, you’re priceless.” Then she got up and went out into the kitchen.

  Old Dead Tired was gazing into the fire.

  I went upstairs and splashed cold water on my forehead until I was reasonably sure I wouldn’t have a stroke. When I came down Lesley in a ruffledy puffledy apron was setting up a cardtable in front of the fire.

  I said, “We’re going out to dinner.”

  She said, “You have another drink and relax. I’ve got dinner all ready.”

  She brought in one of those revolting ripe olive, macaroni, Brussels sprouts, chestnut casseroles so dear to the heart of the bum cook. However, if it had been English Lark in Madeira I couldn’t have eaten a bite, I was so furious.

  Don managed to dredge up enough strength to sit at the table, but I could tell he wasn’t too enthusiastic about either the casserole or the raisin-stuffed prune salad. At least he still preferred my cooking.

  When we were walking up the beach on our way home I said, “Don, how could you let her do that to me?”

  “Do what?” Don asked. “Didn’t you have a good time?”

  I said, “We planned to go out and she didn’t want to go, so we didn’t.” Out there on the beach it sounded senseless.

  Don said, “Look, the stars are out. We might have a clear day for a change. Say, you’d better teach Lesley how to cook.”

  “I couldn’t teach that woman anything,” I said through gritted teeth.

  And so the summer went on and on and on and on and on. Lesley took sun baths all day and wore different real jewels and a different new dress (all cut to the navel) every night. Every afternoon at about five-thirty she would call to have Don help her pull up her boat, open her whisky, carry her groceries, saw up her logs (this sounds like one of those songs—“He threads my needle and he chops my wood”), fix her stove, check her wiring and she was clever enough to make it sound natural.

  Don liked her and Anne and Joan still adored her and they all made me feel like Typhoid Mary if I criticized her even the tiniest bit. I had terrible dreams of frustration every night and woke up every morning even nastier than usual.

  “Lesley has me on the head of a pin and she is enjoying every minute of it,” I told Don.

  He said, “Why are you so stinking about Lesley? She’s a nice gal and she’s lonely.”

  “Yes, lonely for my husband,” I said.

  “You’re being ridiculous,” Don said, but I think we were both relieved when she moved to San Francisco in October. Anne and Joan were inconsolable.

  “She had thirty-one coats,” Anne told one of her friends, “and three Dior dresses.”

  “And real diamonds and rubies,” Joan said.

  “And she had a perfect figure, thirty-six-inch bust, twenty-four-inch waist and thirty-four-inch hips,” Anne said.

  “And she had a gold-color convertible and fourteen cashmere sweaters,” Joan said.

  “Gosh, she was beautiful,” Anne said. “Her hair was platinum and she had great big violet eyes, and whenever her tan faded even a little she took an airplane to Hawaii!”

  “And she didn’t have any hair on her legs,” Joan said. “She told me she never had to shave them the way Betty does.”

  “Somebody set the table,” I shouted rudely. “It’s almost seven.”

  “
Gosh, you’re crabby!” Anne and Joan said together.

  CHAPTER IX

  OTHER FRIENDS AND ENEMIES

  THERE is no doubt about it. Dog loving is closely related to the pounding-yourself-on-the-head-with-a-hammer-because-it-is-so-pleasant-when-you-stop school of masochism. But there are a great many of us dog lovers on Vashon Island. In this small beach community alone, since we have lived here, there have been a Dalmatian, a big black mixed, a collie, a boxer, a great Dane, a Kerry blue, a big yellow mixed, two Irish setters, two wire-haired terriers, a Malemute, a Boston bull, a dachshund, several of those fat, rheumy-eyed, longhaired, indeterminate creatures known as “the old dog,” and several part-Tudor part-Trixie (a wanton who lives on the hill above us) puppies known as Trudors. Tudor, part Welsh terrier, part beagle, part rattlesnake and part mule but leaning toward beagle in looks, has fought them all. His bitterest enemies are Tiger, the boxer, and Trigger, a small rusty black, somewhat Scotty, who looks as if he might own a pawnshop. Tudor and Trigger are very evenly matched in size, age and bad temper, but when the going gets tough Trigger is apt to call in the Marines in the form of Timmy, a young vigorous Kerry blue member of Trigger’s family. I guess it was after he lost most of his tail and part of one ear that Tudor decided to put into practice a few tricks he had learned from the raccoons he had been chasing for five years.

  It was a summer morning of a very low tide, a sun pleasantly muted by mist, the Sound dark and rippleless as a pool of yesterday’s rain water and nasturtiums licking the edge of the silvery sea wall like flames. Anne and Joan and friends in bathing suits and oily as sardines were stretched out on striped beach towels on the sand. A small battery radio poured out King Cole singing “Embraceable You.” The air was spicy with seaweed and sand steaming in the sun. All along the curve of the beach small children bobbed about in the flat water like corks, or crouched on their haunches on the sand, intent on some small project. I had come down to pick some nasturtiums for the table on the porch. I had picked perhaps half a dozen when Trigger’s mistress wandered up to say hello and have a cigarette. Arranging ourselves comfortably on a huge, satiny, bone-colored log near the girls, we lit our cigarettes.

  Down by the water Tudor was engaged in his favorite pastime of chasing sea gull shadows on the sand. As the sea gulls dipped and swooped he dipped and swooped, often turning a somersault in the air. Through eyes squinted against the sun we watched him amused. King Cole changed to “Sweet Lorraine.” It was very peaceful. Then Trigger who had been quietly sitting on his mistress’ feet, suddenly decided to go down and help Tudor. In spite of entreaties from all of us, he sauntered down to the edge of the wet sand where Tudor was playing and stood there a peaceful bystander.

  “Don’t say anything,” I warned the girls. “Sometimes if you don’t say anything, dogs won’t fight.”

  “No rule that applies to normal dogs applies to Tudor,” Anne said bitterly.

  For a minute or two Tudor was unaware of Trigger’s infuriating presence. Then, right in the middle of one of his backflips, he apparently saw him because he changed direction in the air and landed astraddle Trigger’s shoulders. The girls began to shriek, “Do something! Stop them, Mommy. Get the hose. Get a club.” Trigger’s mistress and I, who had that summer already separated our doggies about eighty-six times, decided coolly that the time had come at last to let them fight it out. “Get it out of their systems,” we told each other as we lit new cigarettes off the old ones.

  For almost an hour we tried to interest ourselves in music, smoking, gathering shells and picking nasturtiums while our dogs lunged and snarled and swore at each other on the pretty sand by the blue blue water. It was uncomfortable, like trying to play bridge while an old aunt is choking to death on a fishbone in the same room. Especially as first Anne and Joan and friends, then our neighbors one by one ostentatiously herding their innocent little children, gathered up their paraphernalia and moved from the beach to the high safety of the sea wall, where they huddled watching.

  The battle finally stopped, as it had started, suddenly all at once. Where there had been the dreadful, bone-chilling noises of a dog fight there were now only the peaceful soup-eating noises of the tide and one dog. We looked again. That was it, one dog. Tudor up to his stomach in salt water, was wearing a suspiciously triumphant expression. Trigger had disappeared. Trigger’s mistress and I tossed away our cigarettes and ran down to the edge of the water. We found that Tudor was standing on Trigger, holding him under water. I yelled at Tudor. She waded out and retrieved Trigger and we both gave him artificial respiration, hampered somewhat by many sporting attempts on Tudor’s part to kill him while he was semi-conscious. Trigger came out of the valley of the shadow very quickly, in fact snarling, and he and Tudor started another fight which I finally stopped with the bamboo lawn rake.

  Tiger, the boxer, looks very large and powerful but he spent one evening sitting on my lap eating gumdrops, watching Mr. Peepers on television and proving that appearances are deceiving. At the time, Tudor was at my sister Alison’s, supposedly guarding her against burglars while her husband was in Spokane, but actually killing her cats, sleeping on the boys’ pillows and eating the duck food. Tudor brags of eating nothing but meat and canned dog food, but he will gulp down wild rice almondine with sour cream gravy or peanut butter and pickle sandwiches if it is meant for somebody else. Tudor was at my sister Alison’s a week, which seemed like a second to me and like two years to Alison. During that time Tiger visited me every day. Sometimes just dropping in for a gumdrop or a drink of water. Sometimes stopping by to reassure me of his affection by putting his paws on my shoulders and licking my scalp. Often arriving uncomfortably early, say five-thirty in the morning, and staying all day.

  We grew very fond of each other, Tiger and I. Then Tudor came home. I had called Tiger’s owner and told her that Tudor was coming and she promised to keep Tiger at home, but something went wrong. I was sitting by the dining room window, writing, when I looked up and saw Tiger’s dripping black muzzle pressed tight against the glass, his eyes pleading for a caress. I sprang to my feet and shrieked at Mother who was reading Angela Thirkell in the kitchen, “Mother-Tiger! Tudor! Do something!” Mother, who has great presence of mind but refuses to face the unalterable fact that Tudor doesn’t, hasn’t, won’t mind, called in her gentle voice, “Come here, Tudor.” Tudor came all right. He rushed between her legs almost knocking her down and hurled himself at the dining room door which is glass, shrieking, “Hand me my gun—gimme my switchblade—lemme out of here—lemme at him!” Tiger who was peacefully sniffing the camellias, at first either didn’t hear Tudor or chose to ignore him. Then Tudor obviously called him some terrible thing, something even a television-loving boxer couldn’t take, and Tiger, with a roar, came right through the glass. Mother who had come out of the kitchen but was still wearing her glasses and carrying Before Lunch, reached down calmly and picked up Tudor and carried him kicking and screaming into her bedroom at the other end of the house. I sent Tiger, who looked extremely apologetic, home and Don came up from the beach and began grimly measuring for a new window. A rather monotonous task, he said wearily. It was about the eighth pane of glass he had put in that same location because Tudor always goes in or out of the house like a policeman answering a cry for help through a locked door under which gas is seeping.

  In spite of the fact that he has never learned anything, Tudor is really very smart and actually could understand us if he wanted to. All dog lovers say this, I know, but we have proof because Tudor learned Japanese. When we took a trip to New York we were able to farm the girls out with relatives, but we couldn’t find anybody who would take Tudor and whom we could trust to be nice to him, so we had to leave him and Murra (our then cat) with Warner Yamamoto and family, who assured us they “loved ahnimahl and will feed.”

  When we returned Murra had not changed. She was still living on the mantelpiece and looking down on everybody with complete disdain. Tudor didn’t even look like the same d
og. He kept his head down close to the ground and didn’t speak English.

  “Oh, Tudor, baby, we’re home,” I caroled to him as I got out of the car.

  With a sidelong unfathomable “wisdom of the East” look, he sidled up to Mrs. Yamamoto. She spoke to him in Japanese and he licked her hand.

  “Come here, old boy,” Don called heartily.

  Tudor turned his head away and lowered his eyes which seemed darker and more almond-shaped. Warner said something to him in Japanese and Tudor slithered over to him.

  Later on when we went up for the mail, we discovered that Tudor had also taken to hanging around with a cheap crowd of mongrels who lived down by the dock.

  For over a month he picked at his food and ignored us when we spoke to him. Mother of course suggested that we learn Japanese and speak to him in his native tongue but we refused and, gradually, especially after a summer spent fighting American dogs, he returned to normal, and when we called “Here, boy,” at least turned his head and glanced at us before running in the opposite direction.

  If I am sick, Tudor takes up a vigil by my bed, whining, shivering, looking sad and occasionally, without warning, leaping up, pawing my bust and spilling my coffee. How loyal, how sweet! people say. But I know that these demonstrations are not made out of sympathy. He is afraid I might die and then who would take him to the beach.

  Tudor has his own nice little smelly doggy bed, but he prefers to risk a daily beating with the hearthbroom and sleep on any bed, chair, couch, love seat or chaise longue not barricaded with spiky objects. He growls at babies. He snarls at all milkmen, laundrymen and neighbors. He can be depended on to leap against the back of your knees and try to knock you down when your are going down the path to the beach, especially in winter when it is slippery. When his water bowl is empty he takes it in his teeth and pounds it furiously on the kitchen floor.

  His favorite resting places are in any doorway you intend to go through with a loaded tray, or pressed flat against a step in the middle of the stairway on the nights he is reasonably sure we will get a late telephone call. He has no gallantry and prefers to fight female puppies. He enjoys a swim or two in the icy Sound every day, even in winter. He is fifteen years which is 105 in dog years, but age has neither aged nor softened him. He is as lean and vigorous as Bernarr Mac-Fadden, as devious as Molotov and as determined as Dewey. Mother remarked throatily the other day, “Poor Tudor, he is getting so deaf.” What she means is that he is stone deaf to any command or request by us, but can hear a plate being scraped in Sitka, Alaska.