Onions in the Stew

by Betty Macdonald

  Anne, who had come in to inspect my makeup and borrow a handful of perfume, said, “Oh, Mommy, honestly, I think he’s perfectly disgusting. Can’t Don get rid of him?”

  I said, “He’s Don’s oldest friend, Andy, we’ll just have to be understanding.”

  It really wasn’t too hard as Mary and her friends were fun and Old Buddy stayed on the roof all evening only asking for occasional favors in the way of drinks and the binoculars so he could examine the crevasses on the moon.

  One of the Navy officers (there were three) had brought a guitar and after dinner we went out on the porch in the moonlight and he played sad songs and sang to us. It must have been after three when I was stumbling around emptying ashtrays and brushing potato chips off the mantel while Don hissed at me from the upper hall, “Why don’t you come to bed?” that I remembered about Buddy and realized that we had not heard from him for some time.

  “What are you going to do about Old Buddy?” I whispered hoarsely. “He’s still out on the roof.”

  “Nothing,” Don said. “His responsibility. Now come to bed.”

  “I’ll be along in a minute,” I said, sweeping the hearth.

  As I put the glasses in the dishwasher and put away the liquor and the enormous amount of equipment Don uses for fried-egg sandwiches, I thought again about Buddy out there on the roof in the cold night air. What if he rolled off and broke his neck? What if the raccoons, who favor our roof as a playfield, clawed him?

  Humming happily, I went up to bed.

  The next thing I knew there was sunlight dappling the rug, Don was handing me a silver fizz and up from the patio floated the cheerful thrumming of a guitar.

  “What happened to Old Buddy?” I asked Don as I patted the silver fizz off my lips with the sheet. “I was so worried about him last night I couldn’t sleep.”

  Giving the cord that pulled back the draperies a yank, Don said, “Take a look.”

  Draining my gin fizz, I got warily out of bed, walked to the window and looked out. Below me, spread-eagled in the lawn swing, a white goatskin rug clutched around his throat, was Old Buddy. One of the Navy officers was kneeling beside him strumming his guitar, the other was propping up his head, feeding him a gin fizz.

  Anne and Joan and Mary came in with coffee. Anne said, “You’d better hurry and drink this, Mommy, that Lieutenant Commander and I have breakfast almost ready. We are making buttermilk hotcakes and sausages.”

  Joan said, “What’s that one’s name with the guitar, Aunty Mary?”

  “Johnny,” Mary said.

  “Well, Johnny and I are going out sole spearing right after breakfast.”

  Lighting a cigarette, Mary said, “It’s heavenly out here, Betty. So relaxing.”

  CHAPTER XIV

  ADVICE, ANYBODY?

  I DISLIKE telephoning and have never been able to approach the telephone with the easy nonchalance of most people. My sister Mary, for instance, who embarks upon any telephone conversation with the zest of a person carrying new ice skates happening on a huge frozen lake and can glide effortlessly from the stupidity of publishers to cooking pheasant in sour cream to the dangers of cortone to the peccadillos of her recent maid, for two hours without even changing hands. One of my sister Dede’s favorite stories is about Mary and the telephone. It seems that Dede’s little boy, the second one, had an attack of asthma and so Dede, as we all do, called Mary for sympathy and unofficial medical advice. Mary took the call in her bedroom where she holds many of her medical and psychiatric clinics. Before Dede had half finished the symptoms Mary had made her diagnosis and prescribed the treatment. She said, “There is only one way to handle asthma. You must:

  1.Remove all wool from the room.

  2.Remove all dust from the room.

  3.Wash down all the walls and woodwork.

  4.Put an allergy cover on the mattress.

  5.Put an allergy cover on the pillow.

  6.Remove all toys which might contain allergic materials.

  7.See that the child has plenty of rest.

  8.Bring the child down to the laboratory for interdermals.

  9.What little stinker put shrimps in my wastebasket?

  Lifting up the telephone receiver gives me immediate constipation of the brain and long distance calls also affect my vocal cords so that who ever I’m talking to thinks he has been mistakenly connected with the porch rocker. Even so, every single time I am on the telephone Don materializes at my side and gives me long accusing looks indicating that my frivolity is delaying his call to the coroner. As soon as I spot Don I try to finish up any conversation but he seldom wants to use the phone, just wants me to know that he disapproves of women telephoning to other women. This is rather common among husbands, I am told, especially Elizabeth Gage Wheaton’s husband, Everett, who one day grabbed their telephone by the throat, yanked it out by the roots and threw it through a window that was not open.

  I do not remember just how I first got entangled with Elizabeth Gage Wheaton and Everett and Little Donny and Little Gail and Little P.J. (“Percival Jarod after Everett’s father because Everett insisted but it is such an ugly name we only use the initials”) and Baby (Little Elizabeth Gage). I think it was through my sister Mary and the telephone. Anyway Elizabeth Gage was terribly nervous and run-down and cried a great deal and her children all wet their beds and their panties and her husband had a great big boat even though Elizabeth Gage didn’t even have a washing machine and Mary thought that if I could find them a place on our beach they would all sort of dry out and cheer up. Mary thought also I could help Elizabeth Gage fix herself up and show her how to clean a house and discipline her children. She was terribly intelligent but not very well organized.

  Fortunately, I could not find them a place on our beach because there weren’t any for rent, but I did find, at the other end of the island, an attractive beach house with two sets of double bunks, another bed in the living room, knotty pine walls, a big fireplace and a Bendix. By that time I had met Elizabeth Gage who had big damp blue eyes, hair like sphagnum moss, and didn’t wear a brassière.

  I was quite excited about the house—it was attractive—the beach was sandy, the rent was only seventy-five a month and there was that washing machine. I called Mary so that she could tell Elizabeth Gage and I wouldn’t have to telephone, but Mary had gone fishing in Canada so I had finally to call Elizabeth Gage myself. Elizabeth Gage’s telephone voice was low and sad like a receptionist in a funeral parlor and when she said, “Hello there, honey,” I almost began to cry myself she sounded so beaten and woebegone. I told her about the marvelous house I had found and she said well, she’d look at it but she was thinkin’ more of a little farm. I said that I didn’t know of any farms for rent, in fact I didn’t know of anything else for rent. She said, “It was darlin’ of you to look, honey, but I’m not sure Everett will approve. He has been so mean lately suckin’ up liquor like a hog and sleepin’ in the guestroom and all, but we’ll come over tomorrow. Isn’t there a ferry about ten?”

  Elizabeth Gage was a graduate of Smith College and her father was a prominent attorney somewhere in Texas and she was really beautiful, but when she and Little Donny and Little Gail and Little P.J. and Baby got out of the Buick station wagon the next morning I felt like a California fruit grower in The Grapes of Wrath. Nobody’s hair was combed, all faces were dirty in a grubby long-standing way, supplemented by chocolate, doughnut crumbs, and suckers, and all but Elizabeth Gage, Sr., had on wet panties.

  Elizabeth Gage was wearing a pair of faded jeans with enormous legs and a broken zipper, a dirty white T-shirt of Everett’s, no brassière and red satin mules. The children had on wet dirty coveralls with at least one strap pinned with big rusty safety pins, dirty T-shirts and scuffed brown shoes with broken knotty laces. Like Elizabeth Gage, the children had good features and lovely blue eyes and could have been attractive if they had been clean or dry. Their thin, limp, light hair hung in bangs below their eyebrows and their scalps were crusty with oil
and dirt.

  When she was with her children Elizabeth Gage seemed in a kind of coma—a coma produced by the millions of little attendant interruptions and confusions with which children, especially completely untrained ones, delight in surrounding themselves. She also seemed tired to the point of collapse and on the brink of tears. I suggested a cup of coffee and she accepted gratefully, sinking down into one of the kitchen chairs like a sack of meal. While we drank our coffee at the kitchen table, the children raced through and in and out of the house like a pack of hounds after a fox. Doors slammed, windows rattled, vases quivered, Tudor barked, Baby, who was only two, fell down and bellowed. Elizabeth Gage didn’t even glance at them. She put four lumps of sugar and plenty of cream in her coffee, stirred it sadly and said, “I know I’m too fat and should be reducin’ but I’m so darn tired all the time I just have to take sugar and cream to keep up my energy.”

  “Maybe you need iron,” I said, flinching a little as the children streaked past, joggled my elbow and spilled my coffee on the clean tablecloth.

  “Oh, no,” Elizabeth Gage said, lighting a cigarette. “I just had a physical and the doctor said I’m in perfect health. He said it’s all mental ‘cause I’m so worried about Everett. I just told him everything—I told him how Everett drank and didn’t come home to dinner and slept in the guestroom. . . .” The children galloped past again and sent one of the braided rugs skidding into the fireplace. “The doctor was real sweet. He said I needed a vacation. I told Everett and he said why don’t we go to San Francisco and I said I couldn’t because Little P.J. hasn’t finished his allergy shots, he has terrible asthma you know, and Everett said, ‘Well my God, I didn’t expect to take the kids. I thought you and I were going to have a vacation’ and I just told him that even if he didn’t like his own children, I did, and they would go wherever I went and if he didn’t want them along then perhaps he didn’t want me either. Oh, we had an awful row. I cried for two weeks straight.”

  The children had paused in their marathon to ask Elizabeth Gage for something to eat. While awaiting her reply they pushed the heavy oak captain’s chairs back and forth on the brick floors with a raw scraping sound that was very disturbing. Ignoring the children’s requests for food and the scraping noise, Elizabeth Gage went on, “On Thursday night I just called Mama in Texas and I was cryin’ so hard she could hardly understand me and Little P.J. pinched Baby’s fingers in the desk drawer and she was bawlin’ and honestly Mama was scared to death and wanted me to come right home but I told her that I couldn’t go anywhere until Little P.J. finished his allergy shots and she said she would fly up and I told her not to bother as I didn’t know where I would be but I did tell her how wonderful Mary has been to me and she was tryin’ to get me a house on the beach and she said to let her know and Donny, honey, did you make that big puddle on Betty’s clean floor—shame on you a big boy of six! Where was I . . . oh, yes and so I told her that you were lookin’ for a beach house for us and she said to let her know where and she would fly up and was there anything that she and Daddy could get for me and I said no nothin’ because last Christmas they sent me a sable scarf and I’ve never had it on because you certainly can’t wear sables with jeans and that’s all I ever wear—No, sister, don’t play with the barometer . . . where was I . . .”

  My cleaning woman was there that day and I tried tactfully to suggest leaving the children with her but Elizabeth Gage said, “Love me, love my dog and anyway Baby won’t stay with anybody but me.” Then I suggested giving the children something to eat but she said, “Oh no, they’ve been just stuffin’ on the boat. Candy, pop, ice cream and Little P.J. insisted on eatin’ a chocolate bar and he knows he’s allergic to it and will probably have asthma all night long.”

  Fortunately the real estate man was busy with some people who wanted to buy a farm and asked me if I would take the key and show my friend the house. As we drove away I saw him come to the doorway and peer after us. I resolved to remember to tell him that Mr. Wheaton was a prominent attorney with a big boat. The minute we got to the house the children climbed in the bunks and bounced on the davenport in their wet panties while Elizabeth Gage looked vaguely around and told me about another mean thing Everett did and how she cried for four weeks when he bought the boat and of course would never go out in it because the children might fall overboard—after all they were so little with Donny the oldest only six and Baby just a baby. . . .

  I asked her how she liked the house, making a big fuss over the Bendix, and she said, “Well I really wanted a little farm—you know so the children could have a pony and it does seem rather cramped—I’ll see. . . .”

  I told her she’d have to make up her mind right then, as there were lots of people looking for places to rent on Vashon, and she finally said, “I did have my heart set on a little old farm but I guess this will have to do. . . .”

  From that day forward Elizabeth Gage called me every single day and talked for at least an hour telling me how mean Everett was and how tired she was and how she had really counted on a little farm and if I heard of anything to let her know. . . .

  Two weeks later Little P.J. finished his allergy shots and Elizabeth Gage and the children moved in and I invited them to dinner that night and almost fainted when I saw mean ole Everett who looked just like a harassed edition of Gregory Peck. Elizabeth Gage had on the same jeans, another dirty T-shirt and nurse’s white oxfords. The children were as wet and dirty and boisterous but when they began to race through the house Everett shouted, “GO DOWN TO THE BEACH, ALL OF YOU!” and they went quite quickly and Elizabeth Gage moved over beside me at the sink and said in a low conspiratorial voice, “See how mean he is. That’s what liquor does to him.” As Don had not even finished making the martinis I reasoned that maybe Everett had been drinking before they came. But when Don handed him one a minute or so later, he said, “I’ve been waiting all day for this.”

  I had intended to have the children eat in the kitchen or at the umbrella table while we ate in the dining room, but Elizabeth Gage got tears in her eyes and said that not eating with their parents made children feel left out and her children were never going to feel left out and so we ate dinner to the constant scraping of the chairs, interruptions in the form of “Don’t cry, darling, Betty didn’t know that none of us like peas.” “Just push that to one side, Gail, honey, Mommy’ll fix you a peanut butter sandwich later on.” “Don’t hit sister, P.J.” “Oh, look, Baby spilled her milk on the nice clean tablecloth, naughty baby.” “Children, don’t throw your food on the floor—the doggy doesn’t want your potatoes, Donny. . . .”

  Everett looked defeated and embarrassed and Don gave the details of his plan for a children’s wing which he intends to build some day—plans involving steel bars, cement floors, noiseproof walls—all very unsubtle. After dinner, which seemed interminable, I suggested that Elizabeth Gage might like to put the children down for naps. She said, “Oh, no, they don’t like to nap in strange houses. They will just run around. Food does seem to give children a great deal of energy, doesn’t it?”

  Don and Everett retired to the porch to drink brandy and every time one of the children put a toenail on the porch, Everett shouted, “GO DOWN TO THE BEACH!” even after it was dark.

  At one A.M. all the children except the baby, who had fallen asleep on the living room floor, were in the kitchen scraping the chairs and whining, Elizabeth Gage was sitting at the kitchen table drinking bourbon and water and telling me how mean Everett was and how she couldn’t wash her hair oftener than once every two months because her scalp was so sensitive. Don and Everett had moved indoors in front of the fire. Everett was still drinking brandy and he was quite drunk. When they finally left, about ten minutes of two, Elizabeth Gage paused dramatically at the kitchen door with Baby in her arms and Little P.J. clinging to her knees and said, “Pray for us, honey. Everett’s too drunk to drive, but he will anyway.”

  The next morning about eleven she telephoned to tell me how sorry she was
that they had stayed so late, but I was such a darlin’ and so understandin’ she just wasn’t aware of the time when I was around and the drive home was just horrible but they made it and she was so exhaused from it all she had just waked up but Everett was still asleep. I asked her how the children were and she said they had torn the house to pieces and nobody would take the blame, but one of them had broken Daddy’s telescope and he was just goin’ to be wild.

  She called every day the next week talking about an hour each time, to tell me how small the house was, how cramped the kitchen, how they had really wanted a farm, how she wouldn’t let the children go near the beach because of the poison jellyfish (there aren’t any) and the undertow (the house was on a small very quiet harbor) and how she was thinkin’ of having the Bendix taken out she was so terrified one of the children might get ground up in it. Each time she telephoned Don materialized beside me and looked pained and after I had finally disengaged myself from her, I would tell him how sorry I felt for her but how infuriating she was and he said, “My God, let’s chop it off. She’s like a barnacle.”

  Friday she called and asked if Don and I wouldn’t like to go on their boat with them. I hurriedly advised her of the telephone number of a very capable mature baby-sitter but she said, “Oh, I think I’ll just take the children, they love the water so much.” I said, “I wouldn’t risk it, if I were you. They are so active and they might fall overboard.” She said, “I’m going to buy them all life jackets.” So I said I’d talk to Don and call her back.

  Don said he liked Everett immensely, but he couldn’t stand another session with those brats and did I know that the last time they were at the house one of them had broken the record player and somebody had been playing with the barometer and one of them put the hearthbroom in the fire and there was Fig Newton ground into the wing chair and wet panty marks on both davenports. I kept putting off calling Elizabeth Gage and finally, about ten that night, Everett called and said that he had engaged the baby-sitter and they would come by for us the next morning and would Anne and Joan like to come along too? I told him that Anne and Joan were going away for the weekend, but Don and I would be ready.