Testing the Current

by William McPherson

  His brothers didn’t mind, either. It was John’s night for his mother’s car, which made David really mad. He said he was taking it at midnight even if John had to walk Emily Sedgwick all the way through the snow from the country club to her house, which was a very long way. John got mad and they had a big fight and shouted at each other and fought over who would use the bathroom first, which David got by locking the door when John was called to the phone in the middle of his shaving. It was Emily, of course. “Tell her to be sure to put on her galoshes,” David shouted when John was on the phone. “It’s a long walk and there’s a lot of snow.” When John came back to finish shaving, he banged on the bathroom door and cursed at David—he said “God damn,” which they were never supposed to say, and called David a “son of a bitch,” which was even worse—but David was in the shower singing at the top of his lungs, and he let on that he couldn’t hear John’s shouting. David was singing the song that Emily had given John for Christmas, and that made John even madder. John hardly ever got mad, but he was sure mad now. Finally Tommy’s father came down the hall and told both of them to cut it out or their mother would take the car herself and they’d both walk. His mother was vexed. That was a new word Tommy had learned from Fingerfins, when the professor felt terribly vexed that he’d lost his prize fish; Tommy’s mother had explained what it meant. She told the boys when they were dressed—they looked very handsome in their tuxedos, even David—that that was no way to end the old year, and she hoped they’d try to begin the New Year on a better note. Then she told John that his language was terrible. “That’s no way to talk when your mother’s in the house,” she said. David made a face at John when she said it, but his mother didn’t see him. Finally they drove off together. They were hardly talking. The young people were all going to Nick Kingsfield’s before the dance. They weren’t going to Mr. Wolfe’s dinner, either, but Daisy and Phil were and so were the Griswolds. Tommy bet Daisy would rather go to Nick’s, but she liked Mr. Wolfe, too. She liked people who were lively and attractive, she said, and Mr. Wolfe was both. She didn’t like people who were stuffy, and she thought some of the people who went to the country club were very stuffy. But Tommy thought Daisy would liven up the party, if it needed it.

  It was quieter in the house when his brothers had left, and his mother drew her bath. When she was going to take a long bath with bath oil, she always drew it; otherwise she just took it. Tommy’s father had to use the boys’ bathroom for his shower, and he didn’t like the mess they’d left it in. He said he was going to speak to them about it. His mother took a very long time in the bath—he could hear her humming there—and the bathroom was warm and fragrant when she left it. His father was almost dressed when she came out. He was waiting for her to help him with the studs and cuff links for his shirt. He had to use studs because the shirt had no buttons. It always took him a long time to get into it. It was stiff as a board, there was so much starch in it, and the front was piqué. That’s what they called it. It looked uncomfortable but very fancy. The studs and cuff links had belonged to Tommy’s father’s father, and someday they would probably belong to John because he was the oldest. Then his mother shooed Tommy out of their room. She had to get dressed, but she would call him back when she was ready.

  Tommy loved it when his parents dressed up, and tonight his mother looked more beautiful than he had ever seen her. Her hair was pretty and soft, and she was wearing the black silk dancing shoes that she had gotten especially to wear with her new dress. The shoes had buckles that sparkled. Tommy remembered when his mother had gotten the buckles. They had belonged to Mrs. Henderson, who loved to dance but whose legs had been cut off so she couldn’t. The summer before, Tommy and his mother were in town one day from the Island and they had gone to see Mrs. Henderson. They were standing on her porch—she always called it the veranda—and Mrs. Henderson was in her wheelchair. She was older than Tommy’s mother but his mother said she still loved to dance, so it was especially sad that she’d lost her legs. She couldn’t get used to the artificial ones. Tommy had seen them standing in a corner of the Hendersons’ downstairs bathroom—Mrs. Henderson lived downstairs now—and they had shoes on them. He didn’t like to look. He wondered what had happened to the legs Mrs. Henderson lost. Tommy was a little afraid of Mrs. Henderson, but he liked to help push her wheelchair, which she would sometimes let him do if he would be gentle. That day on Mrs. Henderson’s porch, where the clematis she was so proud of climbed up a trellis from the garden below, she had given Tommy’s mother a pair of shoes with the same buckles clipped to them. The buckles were silver and studded with stones. “You’re the only woman I know with such tiny feet,” Mrs. Henderson said, “and Emma, you do love to dance. I want you to have them,” and she handed his mother the shoes, saying, “Here, dear, dance.” It gave Tommy a chill. His mother didn’t wear the shoes. She put them in a chest in the attic. But she removed the buckles, and tonight she had clipped them to her black silk slippers. When she moved and the dress rippled around her feet, the buckles sparkled.

  Tommy loved his mother’s black chiffon dress. It was made of silk and had a bare back and a short train with a strap attached so she could hold it up when she danced; otherwise, someone might step on it and tear it. Though it was black, it seemed to pick up the light from the lamps in the room and give off a soft shine of its own. His mother said it didn’t shine; it had a sheen, and there is a difference. Tommy watched her as she sat at her dressing table, picking out her jewelry, trying it this way and that. Her neckline was square, and she fastened a jeweled clip at each corner. “No, they’re not real diamonds,” she said to Tommy, “but for fun let’s say they are tonight. It will be our secret.” They sparkled like real diamonds, Tommy thought, and his mother sparkled, too. She put her jeweled arrow in her hair—it took her quite a while to fix it in place—and when she had finished she put on her earrings, which were small but had tiny diamonds in them—they were real—and in each one a single sapphire the color of night. When she had finished, she slipped the sapphire ring on her finger, the one Tommy’s father had given her a long time ago that had a star in it that Tommy had a hard time seeing. Then she stood up and twirled around for Tommy’s and his father’s admiration. Tommy could smell her perfume as she moved in the soft glow of the bedroom lamps, and she swept Tommy into her arms and danced him around the room. She was flushed and felt warm. Tommy asked, “Are you feverish?” and his mother looked startled and slightly annoyed. “No, of course I’m not feverish,” she said, releasing him.

  “Well, you might be getting the measles,” Tommy said in order to explain.

  His mother laughed. “Only children get the measles,” she said. “I’m simply in a glow. It’s nicer to say that I’m glowing.”

  She was, too, from her head to her toes, as she danced gaily around the room, now seizing Tommy’s father and making him dance with her as she hummed a tune, occasionally breaking into words. She reached to the bed for her white silk handkerchief shot with silver threads, the one she used when she wore a long dress and went dancing—“so you don’t stain your partner’s jacket with your warm palm,” she explained. The handkerchief floated from her hand as she moved in time to the music. Suddenly she said, “Run along, everybody, I’ve got to catch my breath,” so Tommy went downstairs and his father followed a minute later. Tommy put John’s record on the Victrola, even though he wasn’t supposed to, but his parents didn’t care and his mother sang along with it—“I was a good little girl, till I met you; You set my heart in a whirl, when I saw you”—as she slowly descended the stairs, the black chiffon dress floating around her, her hair and dress and shoes and eyes sparkling with lights, and she entered the evergreen bower. Tommy and his father stood at the foot of the staircase and applauded. His mother glided past them into the center of the hall, under the mistletoe, where she paused, looking like a fairy queen in her enchanted wood. “Well,” she said, extending her arm, “isn’t anyone going to kiss me and break the spell?”
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br />   Tommy rushed over and threw his arms around her. “Gently, gently,” his mother admonished him.

  “We only want to break the spell, not your mother,” his father said.

  Tommy kissed her very gently, and then his father kissed her and danced her three times around the room before he helped her into her coat and boots. “Even the queen of the night has got to wear her boots,” he said, and got into his own coat and left to bring the car to the door. His mother told Tommy no, he absolutely could not stay up until midnight—maybe next year—kissed him goodbye, said good night to Rose, and left the house. As she passed through the lighted doorway her black dress swirled beneath her black fur coat, and she walked hurriedly to the car in the stormy night. Tommy could see the jewels shining from the arrow in her hair.

  After they had gone, Rose said, “That’s a good one! ‘Even the queen of the night has got to wear her boots,’” and she chuckled at the joke. She gave Tommy a piece of fruitcake and some orange juice and talked to him for a while before insisting he go to bed. Though the tables were already set up, she still had a lot of work to do to get ready for the breakfast party. “You’ll be sound asleep and dreaming,” she told him. And he was.

  When he woke up it was dark, dark like thickest night. The storm had subsided. There was just an occasional flake of snow in the air. He heard the door opening and closing, people stamping their feet, coming in, and laughter and voices floating up the stairs. Someone put the Victrola on, playing the same record that Tommy had left there. He was suddenly wide awake, and excited. It was already the New Year. His parents had come home for their breakfast. Tommy loved parties. He loved his mother, she was so beautiful, and he loved his handsome father. He loved his brothers as well. Tonight he loved everybody. He hoped his brothers had stopped fighting and loved each other too, and that David hadn’t made Emily walk home through the snow. He didn’t think David would really do that, but you never knew with David; he might. Well, John could get a ride with someone else, anyway. He didn’t hear his brothers’ voices, but he could hear his parents’, and the Sedgwicks’, and Mr. Wolfe’s, and the Steers’, and a lot of others. They were all laughing and talking, and the Victrola was playing “I was a good little girl, till I met you,” and then other records for dancing the foxtrots and two-steps and tangoes his mother loved—not the classical records she played when she was alone. The music was loud. It would be interesting to be like Fingerfins and never shut your eyes to sleep at night. That way you wouldn’t miss a thing, and Tommy thought he missed a lot. There were so many mysteries to the grown-up world. Still, he had to shut his eyes to sleep. Fingerfins couldn’t because he had no eyelids. When he was a tiny boy, Tommy had thought that eyeballs were called eyebulbs, like light bulbs. He had a theory that they gave off light and that was how you could see, but when he got a little older and thought about it a little more, he realized how ridiculous that was. But it was an interesting idea. If your eyes gave off light you could penetrate the darkest corners, like a searchlight.

  Tommy could see fairly well in his room. He had made Rose raise his blinds. The night was clear now, and the lights from the roof gave everything a blue glow. Tommy got up to look out the window. He watched the cars pull up the driveway to the house, and heard the sharp, crackling sound of snow crunching beneath tires, car doors slamming like shots, and bursts of talk and laughter. When the ladies got out, he could hear the snow squeak under their feet as they hurried up the walk and the steps, clutching their coats around them. Clusters of people in twos and threes and fives dotted the street, the driveway, and the walk. Their breath came out in little puffs of vapor. His own breath frosted the window. It must have gotten very cold, a bitter night.

  Tommy put on his bathrobe and slippers and tiptoed out of his room, although there was so much noise downstairs it was hardly necessary. He parted the curtains at the top of the stairway without opening them—opening them might make too much noise—and he took a few steps down the stairs. He took them one at a time and kept close to the wall. Tommy paused when he got to the landing by the big window and wondered if he ought to turn back. His mother wouldn’t like it if she saw him, he knew that. After a minute or two he continued down, more quickly now because he didn’t want to be seen, but Mr. Hutchins saw him and called out, “Happy New Year, Tommy.” Mr. Hutchins had confetti on his shoulders. Hardly anyone else noticed him, and Tommy pretended that he was invisible in the enchanted forest of his house. He liked being invisible, and he thought of the emperor’s new clothes, but he wouldn’t like that much. Of course, that was different; it was only the emperor’s clothes that were invisible; the emperor was plain enough for everybody to see, and he was stark naked. “Tommy, you belong in bed!” Mrs. Steer had spotted him. “You’ve just gotten over the measles.” But Tommy moved quickly along and Mrs. Steer was talking to Dr. Rodgers anyway and didn’t pay attention to him. The house was filling with people now. They were talking in groups here and there. Some of them were dancing in the big hall; others were sitting down at the small tables that had been set up that afternoon in the living room and the library. Tommy saw his father in the library, and he avoided that room. He decided to crawl under one of the tables in the living room. With the tablecloths on them, they were just like the tents they made in the summer, and the light was dim, too. There wasn’t much room, and Tommy realized that there wouldn’t be space enough for him when everyone had sat down, even though the card tables had been expanded with the special round tops his parents had. He’d get kicked. He waited there for a few minutes, listening to the voices. Mrs. Sedgwick was telling Mrs. Hutchins how Daisy had danced a great deal—those were her words, “a great deal”—with Bob Griswold, and she observed that they seemed very thick. Her voice sounded thick when she said it. Mrs. Sedgwick had a way of saying things that made you think she was saying more than she was. But Mr. Wolfe, Mrs. Hutchins said, had danced a few times with Daisy too, among others. Mrs. Sedgwick repeated “among others. My,” she said, “the attractive men just buzz around her like bees to honey. It reminds me of the days before I married Tom. So many beaux, such a lot of fun.” Tommy heard his father’s voice approaching, and Mrs. Sedgwick said, “Oh, my, I’m being taken to dance,” and her laughter rippled off toward the hall. Tommy got out from beneath the table when his father had gone. He thought it might be safer in the kitchen with Rose. He darted into the dining room, sticking close to the wall, then the kitchen. Oh, oh! Tommy’s mother was in the kitchen. He moved to the doorway of the maid’s room, which was dark. He stood there against the door, not moving, trying to be still like Fingerfins. His bathrobe was dark, too, dark and ugly, Tommy thought, with its frayed cord. But it was almost as if he were invisible, standing there against the door to the maid’s room while Rose and his mother moved deftly about the kitchen. At least his mother moved deftly; Rose was too fat to move very fast. Mr. Wolfe was standing in the kitchen, too, and Mrs. Sedgwick had come in to help, and also Mrs. Steer. Tommy could hear Mr. Steer’s voice from the living room. He was telling a story and people were laughing. He was good at that, just as he was good at getting them all into a terrible argument. But tonight they were laughing instead of arguing. That was lucky; his parents didn’t like Mr. Steer’s arguments. Mrs. Sedgwick was arranging the bacon and scrambled eggs on platters—she was good at arranging things nicely—and Rose was carrying the platters to the sideboard in the dining room. Tommy’s mother had gone to the stove to pour the boiling water from the teakettle into the coffeepot, and Mr. Wolfe was helping her while Mrs. Steer made toast. There were so many people and so much work to be done that Rose couldn’t handle it by herself. Mrs. Sedgwick said she sometimes thought Rose was more decorative than useful, anyway, and tonight she was wearing a black dress and white apron and a little cap. She didn’t usually, but tonight was a fancy party and she was supposed to look like a maid. It was funny that Rose and his mother both were wearing black; they certainly didn’t look much alike otherwise. Tommy noticed that there was
a little tear in his mother’s hem. She must have forgotten to hold her strap. Tommy really did feel invisible, there in the darkened doorway. No one was seeing him at all. It made him gleeful, and he loved it. He loved the excitement and watching the people walk in and out, leaving little trails of confetti and carrying noisemakers, and all talking at once. Mr. Sedgwick came in and blew a noisemaker in his mother’s ear. It made her jump, and she spilled the water she was pouring. “Tom!” His mother gave a short cry of alarm as the boiling water fell from the teakettle onto her dress. As quick as a flash Mr. Wolfe had grabbed the butter from the kitchen table and his mother was raising her dress to unfasten her garter. She loosed her stocking and peeled it down her leg. Mr. Wolfe made her sit down, crouching before her, raised her leg to his knee, and began to rub her leg with butter. “No, it’s all right, Lucien,” she said. “Really it is,” but his mother’s extended shin looked very red to Tommy, and her face looked flushed. Tommy wanted to rush over to her, to see if she was all right—he didn’t want his mother to be hurt—but he was frozen; he couldn’t move. He heard Mrs. Steer say that butter was the worst thing you could do for burns, that it just made the skin fry, like bacon, and Tommy dashed out of the kitchen. He knew his mother saw him out of the corner of her eye, but there was too much excitement then and she didn’t see him dart under the dining-room table. It was the closest, seemed the safest, place to hide. He couldn’t run through the hall and up the stairs without running into his father. He shouldn’t have come down; he shouldn’t be there at all. He was beginning to wish he weren’t, but he didn’t know what to do. He would surely be in trouble if he were caught going upstairs. He would be in trouble if he were caught underneath the table, too, but he didn’t think that was likely. Tommy could make himself very small, and he wedged himself between the halves of the pedestal. When the leaves were out of the table, just one big round pedestal, like a column, supported it, but when the table was expanded with leaves the pedestal split in half. There was plenty of room in the middle for Tommy. He wrapped his arms around his legs, put his head on his knees, and braced his back and his feet against it. He would disappear. He didn’t want his mother’s skin to fry. He felt like crying, as much for the deep trouble he would be in if he were caught as for his mother’s burn. The guests began to serve themselves from the sideboard as Rose passed them plates. He could hear the clatter of china and silver, and people walking about the room. They began to sit down at the tables in the living room and the library. He could hear their chairs scraping across the rug. His father was sitting in the library. Tommy could tell because his voice was far away, and Mrs. Sedgwick was with him, too. That would mean that his mother would sit in the dining room because they wouldn’t both sit in the same room when they had so many guests, and his mother would want to be close to the kitchen. Soon people began to find their places at the table. Tommy could hear the plates going down: thump, thump. The people were pulling out the chairs and sitting down. They had to raise the cloth to sit down because it almost touched the floor and they couldn’t get their legs under the table otherwise. His mother was in the dining room now. Her voice sounded gay, not hurt. She sat down at the foot of the table, where she always sat, and Mr. Sedgwick sat at the head. He dropped his napkin and had to reach under the table for it, but he didn’t look and he didn’t see Tommy. Mr. Wolfe brought Tommy’s mother a plate, and he sat down next to her. When everyone was sitting, Tommy could look around the circumference of the table and see the folds of the cloth flowing in motionless waves around it, up for a lap and down in between, up and down, up and down, all around the table. There was a real pattern to it, and it was quite pretty. It looked like the scallop shell his grandmother had brought back from Florida a long time ago and kept on a table in her room; it was still there. Tommy could tell who was sitting where, too, and he counted the people at the table. There were ten. Mrs. Steer was sitting across the table from Mr. Wolfe, between Mr. Hutchins and Dr. Rodgers. Mr. Hutchins was on his mother’s left. Mrs. Steer’s dress was light gray and fell like a fluted column, in heavy folds to her feet. Her feet were big, and because she was tall she never wore very high heels. Mr. Sedgwick’s legs were skinny and Mr. Hutchins’ were fat, but both their stomachs bulged against the table. Mr. Wolfe’s were slim, and his stomach didn’t bulge. He’d pulled the legs of his trousers up when he sat down, and Tommy noticed that he didn’t wear garters; his socks just stayed up. His socks were black silk like his father’s, and there was a black silk stripe running down his trouser leg, too. Tommy could see the hairs on Mr. Wolfe’s leg between the top of his socks and the bottom of his trousers. His legs were dark. After his mother had been sitting down for a while she pushed off her shoe with her other foot, and it lay there empty on its side. One stocking hung loosely around her ankle. His mother’s poor leg. It was white now against the blackness of her dress. Her stockings were black too, but you could see through them, like his father’s and Mr. Wolfe’s—like all the men’s at the table, in fact. All the women’s stockings were different. Mrs. Steer’s were pale gray like her dress; Mrs. Rodgers’ were beige, like his mother’s regular stockings, but her dress was blue velvet with a long brown sash. Tommy supposed her stockings matched her sash, but the dress was ugly, not pretty like his mother’s. Mrs. Rodgers’ stomach bulged, too, and her legs were fat. Tommy giggled to himself and hugged his knees tighter. How funny, he thought, that the unblinking eyes of the animals on the plate rail were looking down at all these people and that his own eyes were looking up at them from his secret place in the dark middle of the table—all those eyes looking at them as they chewed and he bet they didn’t even know it. Tommy remembered the crazy man outside the church the day the bishop dedicated Mrs. Wentworth’s Resurrection Window. “Nothing is hidden from the scouring eye of God,” the man had shouted, while everyone looked very annoyed and his father rushed Tommy and his mother to the car, “and His hand shall smite the sinner down!” Tommy shivered at the memory. The man was filthy and he looked crazy. He showed up two more times at the church, but the last time the police took him away and Tommy had never seen him again. Tommy’s mother pulled her dress up a ways, over the leg she’d burned. She had one black leg and one white one. The wet spot on the chiffon where the water had spilled was drying out, and her dress fell in soft ripples from her knees. You could hardly see the tear in her hem. Mrs. Steer’s dress looked pretty, too, though hers fell like marble, Tommy thought, like a statue. Tommy compared Mr. Wolfe’s leg with his mother’s. His mother must have taken the hair off hers. Mr. Wolfe’s had a lot more hair on it. He ate with one hand in his lap, just the way Tommy had been taught. If you weren’t using your hand, it belonged in your lap. Not all the adults had their free hands in their laps, but perhaps they were using them. Mr. Wolfe’s hand—it was his left hand, the one next to his mother—reached over and touched his mother’s leg, just grazing it with his fingertips. His mother shifted slightly in her chair, moving her leg a little. Mr. Wolfe dropped his napkin. He reached down for it without looking and grasped his mother’s ankle, suddenly lifting her leg and his napkin to his lap. He did it so quickly Tommy hardly realized what had happened. It was the leg his mother had hurt. Oh! Mr. Wolfe would hurt it. Oh, oh, oh, his poor mother’s leg! She adjusted it in Mr. Wolfe’s lap. Her dress shimmered faintly. The conversation continued. His mother hadn’t paused. Her voice was the same. She was talking across the table to Dr. Rodgers, who sat on the other side of Mrs. Steer. His stomach didn’t bulge, either. Mr. Wolfe was talking to Mrs. Rodgers, on his right. Dr. and Mrs. Rodgers were the only couple at the table. “That shouldn’t be,” Tommy’s mother said with a laugh. “You see each other all the time.” He knew his parents liked to separate married couples when they sat down at the table. It was all right if you weren’t married—John and Emily always sat next to each other—but not if you were. Tommy could see the buckle on his mother’s empty shoe shining in the gloom. He could have reached out and touched it. Her leg was still on Mr. Wolfe’s l
ap, and he was rubbing it gently. Perhaps he was treating the burn. Why hadn’t she asked Dr. Rodgers? Tommy thought. Maybe he should tell her: “Mommy, ask Dr. Rodgers to fix your leg.” But if he did that he would be caught. Oh, his mother’s poor leg. What could he do? Tommy’s eye was riveted to it. His eye burned. His whole face burned, and felt hot as his mother’s leg must feel. He wondered if her skin were frying right there on Mr. Wolfe’s knee, his hand rubbing slowly up and down, up to her knee and back, up around her knee and back, as the silver clattered and the conversation went on above him, all about the party and Mr. Wolfe’s grand dinner—Tommy didn’t care about Mr. Wolfe’s grand dinner—and about what a fine couple John and Emily made, and how David seemed to be smitten—that was the word Mrs. Rodgers used—with Margie, and my, wasn’t Daisy Meyer a beautiful dancer, as good a dancer as she was a golfer and a tennis player, and how Mr. Hutchins hoped that Bob Griswold was settling Margie’s father’s estate in good order—all the usual things they talked about in Tommy’s city, his own city of Sargasso weeds. Nothing was different; something was different. Tommy was transfixed. He heard the sounds of chewing. He heard his father’s voice from the other room, making all the ladies at his table laugh. “Nobody ever got drunk on Scotch,” he said. Tommy looked over toward Mrs. Steer, who picked up Dr. Rodgers’ hand which had fastened on her knee and dropped it—actually dropped it—back in his lap. That must be what they meant when they laughed about Dr. Rodgers’ roving hands. Tommy smiled. He wasn’t supposed to have heard that. It was so hot under the table. Tommy wondered how he’d ever escape, and he wanted to, he wanted to so much. He looked back toward his mother, hoping she might help. Mr. Wolfe’s hand was kneading his mother’s soft flesh as if it were a lump of dough. The thought made Tommy feel sick. They must be almost finished with their breakfast. Oh, please, let them be finished, Tommy thought. All he wanted was to be in bed with his eyes closed, sleeping. He saw his mother’s hand with the dark star ring reach down and stay Mr. Wolfe, quickly pulling up her stocking and deftly fastening her garter. She was good at that. Tommy always had to use both hands for his, and still he had trouble. Her leg was on the floor now, and she was slipping her foot into her shoe. Tommy heard the front door open, and his mother rose from the table. John and Emily, David and Margie, Vint Steer, the Meyers and the Griswolds, and Nick and Emily’s roommate had just come in from the dance. Tommy’s mother told Rose to put on more eggs and bacon, and people began leaving the table. Tommy heard something drop from Mrs. Steer. “My earring,” she said. Dr. Rodgers said, “I’ll get it.” Mrs. Steer said, “No, I’ll do it,” and they both went under the table at once. Their heads bumped—Tommy almost giggled—but Mrs. Steer found the earring herself. She also found Tommy.