Grandmother said, “Yes, but what is the use?”
“Grandmother—”
“No use—” and Grandmother expired. I burst out crying.
There were eight automobiles. My mother and I rode with my father in the first car, and Persia, with Gideon Bowles, that old friend of the family, rode in the last one.
At the funeral, we all stood together; Jacky, myself, Mother and Father in the front; Persia with Gideon Bowles stood with strangers in the last row. My father, my mother, Jacky, and I did not acknowledge Persia, nor her escort, Gideon Bowles, although we all stood together on the steps as we waited for our cabs. Yet Persia, Gideon, and Papa went off together, while we were left alone, after Papa had handed Mamma into the taxi with a polite good-bye. Mathilde sat in the taxi in a bitter silence; Persia had wished her good day when they first met, and Gideon Bowles had once been her, Mathilde’s, close friend. How treacherous the world is! He had consented to second the outcast Persia on this sad day.
As we went home, someone, I forget who, asked about Grandmother’s inheritance. Someone else said, “A good thing that Vera Hart did not come; I should have ignored her.” A third said, “I suppose they’ll get a smaller apartment now; surely they won’t keep Lily Spontini on—” Someone said, “Shh!”
Lily, who had lived with my father and Persia during this time, as a companion for Grandmother, came to visit us on the second day following. Persia had told Lily that Grandmother wished the money to come to Jacky and me, but there was nothing written down; and Lily was to get nothing. Lily smiled timidly when she said this. However, Persia had offered her the fur coat and what furniture she liked, out of the old woman’s room, because she now had a prospect of marriage. Lily’s man friend was a drug-store clerk, slightly lame; she had met him when she went in to get some headache powders.
In the meantime, Lily was to stay with the couple in the same apartment; “I am invited,” said she, hesitating, with her timid smile. She was meek and kind, saying nothing about her disappointed expectations. She had already spoken to Persia, and in a week would move into Grandmother’s old room, to be near the front door, “so I can answer the bell”; and would be separated from the couple by some rooms, having now, in fact, almost complete privacy. Her former room was now her sitting room. She became rosy, and softly smiled at the prospect.
She cried for a time; but she said, “What times I passed with her when they were away, I can tell no one! Many days I came in from work and found her asleep with her head on the back of the chair. I thought she was dead. What would I do? Poor Aunty,” said Lily, “she was kind, she was nice to me; she called me her daughter”; and then Lily laughed. “And the way she scolded me, believe me, she thought I could not look after myself. But, Mattie, the way she was crying every night, ‘I am dying, I am dying, I’ll never see the sun rise’; and the way she used to say when they were away, ‘I’m too sick, Lily; I hope the sun doesn’t rise any more for me; I can’t get through the nights’; that was bad. I felt so sorry, I used to cry.”
Lily told us how it was during the first days after the funeral. On the night of that day there came Big Lily, one of poor Grandmother’s oldest friends; this was a niece almost her own age, the daughter of Grandmother’s oldest brother.
“Strange it is,” said this woman, “that your mother died so long after her twin sister, Solander!”
“My mother had only an elder sister,” said Solander.
“No,” said Big Lily, “but you have forgotten; she had a twin, a very pretty woman, who did well. She married a man who owned a chain grocery in Detroit. She was always hurt; for they did not think of her, when they were doing so well!”
Solander said, “She had an old friend, Mrs. Bettelmans, in Detroit!”
“That was your aunt!” Big Lily laughed. “So you really don’t know!” She continued, “But I suppose she was humiliated by it: they neglected her, and then when your father, Sol, was divorced, she felt ashamed of herself, having lost her man, though he (I make no criticism now, God knows) was the guilty party. She never would admit to being a divorced woman and it was a long time before she told Mrs. Bettelmans; then she said she was a widow.”
“Yes, but my father is long dead,” said Sol.
“What?” cried Big Lily. “Your father was always large as life and twice as natural! Didn’t he ever write to you? He lives in Montreal, and he has two children; grown up, now, of course, and married. One is a fine woman, pretty, Eleanor; she was here and came to see your mother. Your mother gave her my address, for she said you did not wish to see her; you could not forgive them. But I think poor Jenny Fox did not know how to explain about Mathilde.”
“My heavens,” said Solander, with tears in his eyes, “don’t tell me that my poor little mother concealed all this from me? Poor, poor little thing! What she carried in that little head—what troubles, what disgraces—life is hard!”
“She never told much,” said Lily Spontini.
“I have a sort of family then—she was ashamed of all that,” said Solander, glumly.
“Naturally,” said Big Lily, “she was a timid little thing,” and she wiped her eyes. “I loved Jenny. If your little brother had lived, I suppose she would have felt better; your little brother—your big brother. Two years older than you he would have been now. I’ll never forget the year of that accident when you were scarcely seven months old, and your poor mother—he ran out into the street—”
“Lily,” said Solander, “what do you mean about my brother? Did I have a brother? This is very important to me. I thought I was an only child.”
“Of course, you had a brother, Gilbert,” said Big Lily, looking at Solander suspiciously; “you knew that, at least; why, your mother had three pictures of him. I’ve seen them.”
“Gilbert!” cried Solander Fox. “She has a picture—she had a picture—but that is my cousin Gilbert who died—”
Big Lily murmured, “No, Sol, that was your brother. Jenny was quite broken up. She blamed herself for leaving the door open. But you were only seven months old, and she pulled herself together for your sake.”
“Oh, poor Mamma,” said Solander, putting his head in his hands, “I never knew!”
“At that time,” said Big Lily, “your poor mother, Jenny—Jenny, dear, poor Jenny—such a little thing—” she wiped her eyes. She sniffed and said, “Poor Jenny had a beau, but she was afraid of men, and she led him quite a dance, without knowing it, I suppose; she could not make up her mind. She distrusted men after the way— well, let bygones be bygones—your father was nice enough to his other wife. They just didn’t agree; that’s a bad thing. Now I think a woman should choose her own man. You know that when your Grandfather Hart, a man with a black beard, a terrifying sort of man for a small young woman like your mother, arranged the marriage with your father to suit himself, because he liked Fox, your mother was afraid of the whole thing, and ran away. But they brought her back.”
“Look,” said Sol Fox, “well, it’s all right, Big Lily, just go on; I see I don’t know anything about myself. I understood my mother met my father while she was teaching languages.”
“Yes; your father was then a herbalist, and your Grandfather Hart was a pharmacist, and wanted to go into partnership with this young man to make up some tonic for men’s hair; it gradually dyed it, without hurting it, and made it grow, too. Naturally, if you can get the smallest results in a hair tonic, you can make a fortune. This young Fox really had something, and he had been selling it for about three years from a little basement workshop he had fixed up on the West Side somewhere. Oh, I remember it all. It was whitewashed, damp, all brick with an earth floor; some coconut matting spread on it, two benches, and some canvas chairs, and a little motor going, ‘Um-pla-um-pla!’ and some colored stuff swirling in a big basin. That was all your father had then before he got the support of Mr. Hart.”
Solander Fox got up and started pacing the room, but he remembered himself, smiled at Big Lily and sat down.
<
br /> “Well, go on, Lily,” he said, “tell me all; you see I thought I was somebody else.”
They all fell silent, thinking that his mother was just dead.
After a while, Solander said, “Perce, what do you make of that? We knew nothing about the poor thing. All these stories, to hide all her shames, you see?”
“We do not see what is under our eyes.”
After a long talk, Big Lily said, “I should like to have some little thing. Something to remember Jenny by.” Thus began the tumbling of Grandmother’s possessions. Lily, feeling she should not intrude, stayed in the living room. There were medicines, years old, for heart, rheumatism, liver, headache, eyestrain, with a pair of old spectacles with silver rims, a gray hair knotted in them; a lavender sachet, cheap scent given to her by her granddaughters, photographs of relatives, a little box “for wheatenas.”
Everything had been washed and folded. The bundles of paper with which Grandmother Fox had occupied herself feverishly for years were neatly arranged.
At three of the next afternoon, the doorbell rang and Theodore’s wife, the dreaded, gay Vera blew in. She must have weighed a hundred and ninety pounds. She was dressed in lavender voile and a big straw hat, with purple gloves and she carried a cakebox in her hand.
“Persia!” she cried, enthusiastically, ignoring Little Lily, for the moment, “poor Grandmother! Poor Jenny Fox! I could not get to the funeral yesterday. You know I have to work, the afternoon is my time on; and poor Theodore! He felt he had to go to the funeral. Why not? Blood is thicker than water. I said, ‘Go, Theo!’ Look, I brought you a cake! I thought you’d probably need something, and have nothing in the house! All this upset! Yes, yes, and this is Little Lily’s room? I’ve never been to see you—I often thought of it—”
Persia apologized.
“It’s all right,” said Vera, putting her at ease, and with an intelligent smile, “Sol likes to be with you at home in the evenings, it’s natural, and I myself, what time have I—?”
The intelligent woman managed to get a smile from Persia too; for few of the family would admit in conversation even after all these years that Solander really liked to be with Persia; Lily Spontini was the only one who dared to affirm it publicly and laugh at it.
“And now let’s eat the cake,” said the woman in purple, “I’m hungry. I had lunch, and look at my waist—but this cake won’t make an extra bulge, and if it does, you won’t be able to pick it out from the others. What did Jenny leave? I’d like something for a memento. Let’s have some cake and then I’ll just look through, don’t you see—I know her prejudices; she was a dear old thing, old-fashioned, and I know what she’d like me to have. Have you given away anything yet?”
“No,” said Persia, “I’ll get a plate for the cake.”
Little Lily sat down cheerfully with Vera, one of her old friends, and they clattered away, Vera keeping her ears open but not able to distinguish what Persia was doing. She was taking out the fur coat and hiding it in her own linen closet, for she intended it for Little Lily. Then she came back, with a serene look, and saw that Little Lily and Vera had finished the cake between them, and were looking very gay. Wiping her hands elegantly upon the napkin, Vera got up. briskly and asked to be allowed to go to the old woman’s room. She went first, with Lily after her. Persia stayed behind. She heard Vera’s astonishment:
“Why, she had nothing! Fooey—those bloomers! Old woman, eh? This is yours, Lily? Well, there isn’t much to take. What did she do with it? Gave it away to Mathilde? To whom? Worthless trash! If I’d known that’s all she had, I wouldn’t have come. But I had to pay a visit. What old women keep—what’s in here? Ha-ha! Look here. Old bits of elastic—no use—there’s nothing I can take. But I must take something. This sewing box is no good; it’s unglued. This table runner—it’s not worth anything, but I can’t go away emptyhanded.”
They went through the closet, and through her old paper valises, “Where are all her clothes? She had some clothes? Her fur coat?”
Lily sighed, “I don’t know; what did she have? She didn’t have so much.”
“But I’ve seen dresses—”
“You couldn’t wear them!” They laughed.
“Probably she felt her end coming—I’ve seen a lot of these old dames,” said Vera genially; “they often know. They start to give away things and that’s the sign, because they’re all old misers.”
She gave a ringing laugh, which stopped short, “I’m forgetting where I am. You’re getting the room, eh? Lucky. No rent.”
Presently she came out with a wretched cotton table runner in her hand, “This’ll do; it’s only for the remembrance,” and in two minutes she was off.
That same evening Mrs. Rode, the White Russian, was there, stony and bitter, saying that Mrs. Fox had liked her, but turned against her in her senility; she must have something to remember her by, in fact, she demanded it. She was cold, her child was cold, they were dying of poverty and an old, dead woman had no use any more for anything. Lily and Persia let her in to rummage. She came out, disappointed, with some underwear.
“What did she do with it all?” she asked bluntly. “I knew she was going and looked through long ago! Not enough left now for the moths to eat.”
The next morning, Dora came to pay her respects to the bereaved. She took two blankets from the dead woman’s bed for Tony to take to camp.
The woman next door came in, shamefaced, and said that she had often run in to bring Mrs. Fox a little cake of her own baking and now she would like a remembrance. The little coffee pot, which made just one cup—she had often admired it; or those two pretty flowered cups and saucers, which were Grandmother Jenny’s own.
During the week some two or three other disgruntled friends or relatives appeared and turned over the pauper’s belongings of the dead woman; toward the end of the week two had to go away with empty hands. There were no more pickings; what was left was not fit for charity.
When this was all over, Lily became the heiress of the fur coat, and took it to the furrier’s to be remodeled. Lily confided shyly, at the end of this account, “You see, I have a real boy, he’s quite interested in me. He thought I might get some money from Aunty Jenny when she died; but he is not mean, not that sort, and when I told him they gave me the fur coat he was quite pleased; he says, ‘It will do’; and then Big Lily likes me too and he likes Big Lily too.”
Mathilde asked, “Didn’t Mother leave anything?”
“There isn’t any will,” said Lily, “but I am told—I was told— by someone, that Jacky and Letty are supposed to get twenty-five hundred dollars each when they marry. It is nothing on paper—just a promise—”
“A promise,” said my mother, dispiritedly, “and the old woman told me in her last days that those two had spent it all already—but, of course, who can believe such tales? I don’t know where I stand! And what about Andrea?”
“Andrea—” Lily’s mouth fell; “I don’t know,” she said stupidly. “She must have thought of Andrea.”
“I don’t know,” said Lily in fright. She soon left.
26
The idea of this money gnawed away at me. I needed clothes, money for parties and presents, though my theater tickets and movies and cocktails were all paid for by others. I wanted corsages and taxi-rides and more than could be provided for by the boys I went with.
I saw what happened to the girls who looked poor, talked poor, and went poor—they went poor, semi-colon; and they got no invitations, period. They didn’t live; they dragged along like an amoeba, rather, like a slow-worm. (I don’t know if that’s really slow.) The amoeba, that was I. I surrounded everything and then looked at it; if it didn’t suit me, I exuded it, negligently. I was doing well at school, too. I couldn’t see where girls got the idea that not to wear lipstick and not to go to dances made you brighter.
I was in a special class for themes; I was leading member of the school paper, and slaved in the publications office from morn till night; beca
me, after two issues, an expert at dummying, writing headlines, rewriting, getting pally with the printers and writing fill-in poetry when I needed two extra lines; I learned, without tears, how to prostitute my talent, putting in little things to please the faculty adviser and editor. I turned poet, toured the radical sheets with my output, having imitated, without effort, T. S. Eliot, Ogden Nash, and perhaps Abe Lincoln in some of his worse moments. As for the rest, like every other literary-minded brat in the U.S. of the day, with Jacky as my detested and derided competitor, I was at work on the great American novel of the youth of 1936, which seemed to us then decidedly fifty years ahead of anyone born fifty years before.
We knew how to be not only iconoclastic, but smooth and level-headed about it; we had a sense of humor and could wind up an exhortation with a punch line. That is, I could. Jacky never was humorous. She lacked this quality. She intended to move into history with all sails set. She took things seriously, and I was always telling her that we’d both wind up on the barricades, only she would get shot, and I’d get the editor of the Daily Worker, whoever he might happen to be. Jacky told me I was shallow and an ape; I said she was like the tarpools, profound, black mud. She was a bit pale at this time, with sunken eyes; and she did not like the boys I brought round.
I swallowed every new book; she pretentiously made notes on the classics. I read Personal History by Vincent Sheean, which bored me intensely; Mary, Queen of Scots, by Stefan Zweig; much ado about nothing, as Grandmother would have said, for it apparently didn’t occur to that pale-loined son of the upper-upper that she might not be the white-faced angel which he made her out to be; but this, of course, was peach melba to the mammas in the book clubs; then another book, overwhelming in its superciliousness, Eyeless in Gaza. I had been to a British school, and I had never seen a man so anxious to show that he had been to a British public school, that he knew a thing or two about philosophy and literature and that he was one of the Huxleys, of the inside-inside. And then, Good-bye, Mr. Chips, sweet, and the depressing Ethan Frome.
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