High Time

by Mary Lasswell

  To take away the chill of the oysters, the party enjoyed large deviled crabs served in their bright red shells. Plenty of Tartar sauce and French fried potatoes accompanied the crabs. Mrs. Feeley almost told a joke about crabs, but thought better of it Darleen never let the beer-glasses stay empty a minute. She was some hostess.

  When the crabs had gone the way of all flesh, each lady was served half a lobster with mayonnaise. Even Mrs. Rasmussen had to admit that the accompanying cole slaw and French rolls were very tasty.

  ‘Something so festive about lobster!’ Miss Tinkham beamed at Darleen. ‘It has an air about it!’

  ‘I’m sure glad you like it,’ the hostess replied.

  Everyone was busy gouging and prying out the precious pink morsels. Mrs. Feeley said she didn’t know when she had been in such a nice, genteel place. The juke-box played softly and continuously. When it came to ‘Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,’ she grinned and remarked: ‘That sure as hell don’t apply to us, does it?’

  The waiter was slightly bug-eyed at the amount of food and beer his table consumed, but he knew Darleen was good for the bill. They had an awful time deciding between broiled red snapper and fried abalone steaks. The red snapper won. Mrs. Feeley decided that she had better go and wash her hands if she expected to stow away the next course in comfort. Darleen pointed out the door to her and off she went.

  Miss Tinkham was beginning to get the far comers filled up and had time for conversation once more.

  ‘My dear, Johnny should be very proud of you! You are a gracious hostess and preside beautifully!’

  Mrs. Rasmussen nodded, although she did not know what it all meant. Neither did Darleen, but it sounded impressive. Mrs. Feeley came back and said she was ready to start all over again. She pulled some folded papers from her pocket and showed them to her friends. They were tissue seat-covers. She handed them to Mrs. Rasmussen and said:

  ‘Just put these in your bag! We may not always have the luck to be in elegant dumps like this!’

  ‘What will the ladies have for dessert?’ the waiter asked.

  ‘Bring me some ham an’ eggs,’ Mrs. Rasmussen laughed.

  ‘Some toasted crackers and Camembert?’ the waiter coaxed.

  ‘By all means!’ Miss Tinkham said. ‘Camembert! My favorite cheese!’

  ‘Sure! Bring on the cheese! Go good with the beer!’ Mrs. Feeley commanded, back in her element now that she knew what he was talking about.

  The ladies looked curiously at the runny triangles of cheese.

  Mrs. Rasmussen was feeling real skittish, for she turned and asked the waiter where her clothespin was, holding her nose suggestively.

  Darleen said she had never had such a pleasant time in her whole life. The ladies said they had not either. When the bill and the waiter had been taken care of, they rose to go—Mrs. Feeley charging ahead as usual.

  The others lingered to pick up match-books and menus as souvenirs of the happy time. They heard suppressed laughter and titters at the tables all about them. Every head in the restaurant was turned to watch Mrs. Feeley’s majestic progress. In her haste to acquire the seat-covers, she had neglected something: the entire back of her skirt and slip was tucked into the elastic waistband of her bloomers. The diners were getting the full benefit of Mrs. Feeley’s bare legs, like tenpins, and a truly impressive breadth of beam clad in tightly stretched pink rayon. Sublimely unaware of the disarray, Mrs. Feeley continued her stately progress right out the front door. Her friends caught up with her and pulled her dress down while Darleen hailed a cab.

  ‘Hope the sight done ’em good,’ Mrs. Feeley chuckled in the taxi. ‘I ain’t got no thin’ to be ashamed of! Mr. Feeley always said a woman oughta dress as clean an’ neat underneath as if she expected to get knocked down by a truck an’ took off to the hospital every time she left the house! Darleen! The rest o’ the night’s on us! Where do we go from here?’

  Darleen suggested a bar where fun and frolic were rife.

  ‘Kinda postman’s holiday for you, ain’t it?’ Mrs. Rasmussen said as they entered The Seven Seas. Apparently the seas had been a bit rough lately. The once lovely tappas were faded and motheaten, and the murals had been touched up by artistic patrons in their cups. The genuine Hawaiian orchestra consisted of very un-Polynesian musicians: two Mexicans and a Filipino.

  The beers were large and cheap and Darleen certainly knew a lot of fellows. They all came over and paid their respects; she introduced them with pride to her new friends. True, she seldom knew the last names of the young men, but she knew a lot of them. Mrs. Feeley decided there was safety in numbers. A foreman from one of the shipyards asked Miss Tinkham to dance. They went out on the floor and began to toddle blissfully, cheek to cheek, their rear ends stuck out at an angle of forty-five degrees.

  ‘You sure can’t beat Miss Tinkham,’ Darleen said admiringly.

  ‘Beat her? Hell, you can’t even tie her! She’s got more joy in her than ten ordinary people!’ Mrs. Feeley responded.

  The lady under discussion had made a conquest. Her foreman friend asked if he might join them and bought more beer all around—he wanted to know where Miss Tinkham lived and why he had not met her before. It was not every day one met such good company. His name was Oscar.

  The lethargic orchestra began to play a dispirited hula and Mrs. Feeley made hula movements with her fat little hands.

  ‘That Whine music always reminds me o’ Danny,’ she said fondly.

  ‘And the leis at the dear old Tropic!’ Miss Tinkham put in.

  ‘What was that?’ Oscar perked right up.

  Miss Tinkham explained and the ladies continued to reminisce. The more they thought of the fun they had last year, the sadder they became. Five hours of steady beer-drinking may have contributed a little to their world-sorrow.

  ‘But what we’re doin’ now is a bigger help to the war, even if it ain’t as much fun!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said with a hiccup.

  Mrs. Feeley was mulling something over.

  ‘Where do you s’pose their ma is?’ she asked Darleen.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Them brats next door to you!’ Mrs. Feeley said.

  ‘Supposed to be working,’ Darleen answered.

  ‘War work?’

  ‘Well—’ Darleen said, after a pause, ‘that’s one way of looking at it’

  The ladies looked at each other sharply.

  ‘Does she relieve a man?’ Mrs. Rasmussen asked.

  ‘Well, I’m not one to criticize—but the rumor is—quite some few,’ and her voice dwindled away.

  ‘The trollop!’ Mrs. Feeley cried indignantly. ‘No wonder them kids is like wild things: dragged up in vice an’ sin!’

  Darleen nodded: ‘She hasn’t never been right since the Japs executed her husband that time. She just went off the beam all at once! Started drinking and bringing guys home like crazy.’

  The ladies were open-mouthed.

  ‘Why’d they execute him?’ Mrs. Feeley asked.

  ‘He was a tail-gunner in one of them Tokio raids—and they captured him. Later on they shot a big bunch and he was one of them! She feels like it’s her fault, on account of she nagged him so much he put in for the most dangerous job he could get. She was mad at him when he left and wouldn’t even go up to Frisco to see him off! Now she hates herself, and that’s why she acts the way she does—I guess she’s trying to make it up to him by not refusing nobody nothing no more!’

  ‘Great Gawdlemighty!’ Mrs. Feeley gasped. ‘Let her destroy herself if she’s a mind to! But them kids! In all that filth an’ evil! They had oughta be turned in to one o’ the societies or somethin’!’

  ‘Don’t know how they got off this long!’ Mrs. Rasmussen said. ‘Them societies is sure nosy!’

  Miss Tinkham was sobbing softly.

  ‘The children of a hero! A martyr, I might even say—abandoned to the raw gusts of passion! A demented mother! What chance have they in life? Juvenile delinquents, criminals, and degenerates!’ she w
ailed.

  ‘Gawd! Is it that bad?’ Mrs. Feeley cried.

  ‘That ol’ sour milk!’ Mrs. Rasmussen sniffled. ‘An’ her pants draggin’ clear down ’round her ankles!’

  Mrs. Feeley finished her beer and set her mug down like a period at the end of a sentence.

  ‘Damn! I hate like hell to do it! Them stinkin’, squallin’, fightin’ street Ay-rabs! But we’d never be able to look each other in the face again did we let ’em stay in that boar’s nest one more night! C’mon, Darleen! We gotta take a cab to carry the pressure-cooker, anyway!’

  Chapter 6

  THE NEXT MORNING the residents of Noah’s Ark woke with hangovers of assorted sizes and hues. They jumped hurriedly out of bed, never the most prudent move after a highly convivial evening, to track down the source of a noise much like that Noah must have heard when he was moved to build the original Ark.

  Pierpont and Myrna had discovered the bathroom. They had both tub faucets turned on full blast and were jumping up and down in the tub naked, screaming like Comanches.

  Mrs. Feeley pried a jaundiced eye open and peeked in the door. The tub was half-full of pots and pans. Mrs. Rasmussen would take a fit when she discovered that Pierpont was using her good colander for a shower bath. Myrna was floating a baking-pan, splashing it along with her hands.

  ‘Beep! Beep! I’m a tug!’ she grinned.

  ‘Airplane carrier! Airplane carrier!’ her brother corrected, banging her cordially on the head with a pie-pan.

  ‘Tug!’ Myrna reiterated firmly, kicking her brother where she thought it would do the most good.

  ‘Gawd!’ Mrs. Feeley moaned. ‘We sure went an’ done it this time!’ She rolled back to the kitchen in search of a beer.

  Mrs. Rasmussen and Miss Tinkham beat her to the icebox. They were gulping down beer and rocking from side to side.

  ‘How the hell’d they get here?’ Mrs. Rasmussen wanted to know.

  ‘I’m afraid we were carried away by an excess of patriotism,’ Miss Tinkham said ruefully.

  Mrs. Rasmussen went over to the pallet on the floor where the children had been dumped with scant ceremony the night before. She passed an experienced hand over the quilts.

  ‘Who’d ’a’ thought it? They’re house-broke!’ she murmured in amazement.

  ‘My head feels like the little men with the ’lectric riveters was doin’ their worst right inside of it!’ Mrs. Feeley groaned. ‘We sure tied one on last night, didn’t we?’

  ‘We was full o’ wild moose milk, all right!’ Mrs. Rasmussen agreed.

  ‘The milk o’ human kindness has kinda soured a little bit this mornin’, though,’ Mrs. Feeley sighed, cocking a weather eye in the direction of the bathroom. ‘What in the name o’ God we gonna do with ’em when the twins gets here?’

  Pierpont and Myrna had evidently finished their naval maneuvers—they were now screaming ‘God Bless America’ at the top of their lungs and beating time against the side of the tub with Mrs. Rasmussen’s treasured red coffee-pot.

  ‘There ain’t no thin’ for it, I guess,’ the owner of the red coffee-pot said, girding up her loins. ‘They gotta be fed an’ then they gotta be took off somewheres. Winston an’ Franklin wouldn’t sleep a wink with that rumpus goin’ on!’

  ‘What was we thinkin’ of!’ Mrs. Feeley fumed.

  In the normal course of events, the ladies could have gone back to bed and slept off their ills, thanks to the cherubic dispositions of the twins. The twins were gentlemen: they understood the importance of sleep the morning after. But Pierpont and Myrna reminded Miss Tinkham of a character in Shakespeare who had murdered sleep—Mac—something-or-other; the way her head was buzzing she couldn’t think of it right at the moment.

  Mrs. Rasmussen got a grip on herself and scrambled two eggs. Then she made toast. After setting the food in the warming oven, she took a large towel from a drawer and charged into the bathroom.

  ‘Get out!’ she ordered crisply.

  Pierpont and Myrna ignored the order.

  ‘Get outa that tub!’ Mrs. Rasmussen’s mouth was very firm.

  Pierpont held his nose and stuck his head under the water. Then he wiggled his feet at Mrs. Rasmussen. Mrs. Rasmussen’s muscular arm reached out with smoothness and precision and grabbed Pierpont by the scruff of his scrawny neck. He fought and wriggled, but she held him fast in the thick towel. Without haste she sat down on the toilet seat and calmly and methodically blistered Pierpont’s bony posterior. Myrna climbed out of the tub in a slippery flash and was on Mrs. Rasmussen biting and scratching like an angry cat.

  ‘Ol’ squack! Ol’ squack!’ she screamed.

  Mrs. Rasmussen held Pierpont under one arm and picked Myrna up with the other. Mrs. Feeley and Miss Tinkham were standing in the door watching the fracas.

  ‘Guess you need a mite o’ somethin’ to start your circulation goin’ after bein’ so long in the cold water,’ she announced calmly, and administered a few sharp slaps where Myrna needed them most.

  ‘Would you be so kindly as to hand me their dirty, stinkin’ clothes, Mrs. Feeley? We ain’t got nothin’ else to put on right now!’ Mrs. Feeley brought in the scant garments and took up her post in the door.

  ‘Now you put ’em on,’ she said, handing each child the right clothes. ‘On the double!’

  Astonished, Pierpont and Myrna never took their eyes off Mrs. Rasmussen. But they put their clothes on.

  ‘Stick out your finger,’ their mentor ordered. They did so and Mrs. Rasmussen squeezed a blob of toothpaste on each clean, water-soaked finger.

  ‘Now rub like hell, an’ let’s see can’t we get some o’ that green moss offa them little teeth!’ The children rubbed like hell. Myrna liked her toothpaste so well that she swallowed it.

  ‘Now the comb!’ Mrs. Rasmussen cried.

  Pierpont’s hair was no job at all, although his cowlick would not stay put Myrna scrouged down in the comer when the comb started in the direction of her kinky red mop. But Mrs. Rasmussen was expert: she held the wiggling mite in a firm grip between her knees.

  ‘Now we’ll eat!’ she announced.

  The boy and girl followed her to the table, eyeing her cautiously all the while. At her command, they sat down and she tied napkins under their chins. They protested. Mrs. Rasmussen ignored the protest and set plates of scrambled eggs and toast in front of them. The water was boiling in the kettle and she made some instant cocoa for them, as there was no fresh milk in the house.

  Pierpont and Myrna tied into the eggs with gusto.

  In the middle of a big mouthful, Myrna announced: ‘Don’ like scrammel-deggs! Wanna hot-dog!’

  With utmost unconcern Mrs. Rasmussen glanced at the almost-empty plate, then said softly: ‘If you know what’s good for you, you’ll eat your breakfast an’ keep your damn mouth shut before I spank the waddin’ outa you!’

  The other ladies were overcome: they hadn’t known Mrs. Rasmussen was a child psychologist!

  The sight and smell of scrambled eggs were too much for the queasy stomachs of Mrs. Feeley and Miss Tinkham, so they left the vicinity of the table. Miss Tinkham moved slowly and carefully as though she were held together with bits of baling wire. Mrs. Feeley said she felt as if she was made of glass and would shatter if she sat down suddenly.

  ‘Gawd, I wonder what’s keepin’ Lily,’ Mrs. Feeley yawned. ‘Not that I’m in a hurry to see any new faces in this zoo, but they ain’t never been late before.’

  The fog was beginning to lift in Miss Tinkham’s cranium.

  ‘It has just occurred to me that unless the Celestial Bodies are wrong, this is Sunday and the twins won’t be here!’

  ‘Gawd! That’s the truth! That’s the best piece o’ news since Katy an’ Danny told us they was gonna marry!’ Mrs. Feeley sank gently into a heap from sheer relief.

  ‘But what we aimin’ to do with these house-apes?’ Mrs. Rasmussen asked.

  ‘Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,’ Miss Tinkham quoted wearily.

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p; ‘Well, looks like the day’s right at hand!’ Mrs. Rasmussen replied, pointing to Pierpont and Myrna, who had discovered the sewing-machine and were riding up and down like mad things on the treadle.

  ‘Hey, boy! Knock that off this minute!’ Mrs. Feeley shouted.

  ‘Wanna ride! Wanna ride!’ Myrna shrieked.

  ‘Turn on the radio,’ Mrs. Feeley suggested. ‘Maybe that’ll quieten ’em down!’ The radio was playing a charming pastoral entitled ‘Cow Cow Boogie,’ positively obscene at eight A.M.

  Instead of calming the visitors, the music seemed to work them into a frenzy.

  ‘Jitterbug, Myrna! Jitterbug!’ Pierpont cried, clapping his hands in a syncopated beat. His sister needed little encouragement. She pointed a tiny finger in the air and began shaking her head from side to side. Soon her skinny shanks were flying about in all directions in the most approved hep-cat fashion. The ladies held their heads.

  The music came to an end and Myrna ran down.

  ‘Just about in time, I’d say,’ Mrs. Rasmussen muttered, grabbing Myrna by the slack of her pants. ‘Them damn pants! They drags round your ankles like hobbles! ’Nother minute an’ you’d ’a’ fell flat o’ your face!’ She wrestled in vain with the recalcitrant drawers, trying to tighten the waistband. She gave up with a sigh: ‘Your hind-end just ain’t designed to hold up pants!’

  Pierpont was now free to explore the Ark. He was playing Air Port, diving in and out between the rose velour curtains. Myrna joined him the moment Mrs. Rasmussen released her. Miss Tinkham winced at each crash and bang the children produced. She kept just as far away from them as she could, remembering Myrna’s passion for exercising her perfect occlusion.

  ‘We sure run into a herd o’ wild elephants, this time,’ Mrs. Feeley said gloomily.

  The air was full of the sound of ack-ack guns, the current plague, reproduced with disgusting realism by the youngsters. Miss Tinkham thought she might have an attack of the vapors and Mrs. Feeley’s head was splitting. Even Mrs. Rasmussen’s monumental calm was cracking. The children climbed onto the cherished table with the chromium legs and dived off onto the floor.