“Come on, Franny,” Fee whispered again.
“Don’t pester me. You go, if you want.”
Alexandra said, “Franny, we might ask the Paiges if they’d want you to go out for a while, don’t you think so?”
“Not at all,” Evan said before Fran had time to resent being chided, “but I don’t imagine the girls will be interested.” He had grown serious and addressed himself directly to Stefan, and Fran settled back in triumph over her mother.
“What I want to discuss, Stefan,” Evan Paige said, “is something important to me, and to the League. We have too many lawyers and we need editors, writers, lecturers. We need to find the right man, and nominate him and elect him as a member of our Board.”
“And you want Stefan,” Alexandra said, her pleasure uncomplicated and unconcealed.
“Not just I,” he answered. “When I told Theodore Schroeder and Brand Whitlock and Abbott about knowing Stefan—they wanted him as much as I do.”
Stefan, too, was pleased—Paige would not imply that Whitlock and Abbott and the rest knew of him unless it were so, but a frown pulled together the lines above his nose.
“I’m not the man for it,” he said.
“Oh, Stefan, my dear,” Alida said, her color rising a little, “you are just the man for it, just the man they want.” As she ended, she saw the intent faces turned to her, and she looked flustered.
“Now, girls,” Alexandra said, “I think we’d like to discuss this by ourselves.”
“Please,” Fran said, “just a little while longer. Mr. Paige said—”
“No, dear,” Alexandra said calmly. “Now, we want to be down here ourselves.”
“But, Mama,” Fee protested. She still wished Fran weren’t pigheaded about staying, but being put out was another matter.
“Now, now,” Alexandra said, standing up and signaling to Stefan to leave this familiar business to her. “We’ve had this before. I don’t hang around when Trudy is here to make fudge, do I, Fee? Not every single minute until you scrape the pot? Or you, Franny, when you come home after school with Jack Purney—”
“Oh, all right,” Fran interrupted, to head off any Mama-ish comments about Jack. “Come on, Fee.”
She walked off in ladylike poise, Fee at her side, but when it was safe, she made a face of deadly disapproval in the direction of her parents and their friends. Fee giggled. Fran glided toward the door and then ran up the stairs two at a time. Fee raced after her, stopping only to unlock the back door, whistle for Shag, and let him dash up at her side as if he too were glad to escape the dopey world of parents.
Downstairs, Stefan repeated more firmly, “No, I’m really not the man for it. By nature, I’m sorry to say, I don’t work well any more in a committee. When I was young, at the University of Odessa, with Drubhinov and the others—there, to work together was priceless; we all found it so.”
“It is harder to be flexible as we grow older,” Paige conceded. “But I am sure you would be flexible enough, Stefan; this is a rather remarkable group.”
“That’s the trouble,” he said. “‘A remarkable group.’ I’m too used to being on a lecture platform, perhaps, the kingpin for a lot of poor devils, too hortatory perhaps, too much the eternal teacher, you follow me?”
At his last three words, Ivarin suddenly laughed, holding up a cautionary finger. “See there? I didn’t mean it, it slipped out, it’s the betrayer, the trademark of the lecturer and the teacher. ‘You follow me’ indeed.”
Paige laughed also, his eyes fighting with a private pleasure in the way Ivarin’s mind operated. “It is the phrase of a teacher,” he said comfortably. “But they know about you and what you do. And they want you very much. By now they are counting on it.”
“I thank you,” Stefan said. “I thank them.” He shoved his tea from him, stood up, and began pacing back and forth on a small track, remaining part of the group, yet finding the comfort of motion he so often needed. By now, both Paiges had become accustomed to this habit, and neither one remarked it as they had done in the first stages of their friendship, when it had invariably made them wonder if he had grown so restless that they ought to take their leave at once. Now they merely watched him idly, as if he were polishing his glasses or rolling a cigarette.
Alexandra said, to nobody in particular, “It is only a phrase, after all. They want him as he is.”
“Yes, yes, I don’t doubt it,” Stefan answered vigorously. To Evan, he said, “You will be able to explain to them, I’m sure. They will understand, because—if I am wrong, please correct me—because you understand.”
Evan nodded. He looked up at Ivarin affectionately, not challenging or pursuing the discussion. Then he said simply, “We need your help, Stefan.”
Ivarin stopped pacing. “I’m not refusing to help.” He sat down at the table, addressing himself to Evan with heightened seriousness. “There is another point, if I may raise it.”
“Please do.”
“Aside from my own fitness or unfitness, I must tell you—I disagree that your League needs writers and editors to mix in with its lawyers.”
“But we’re topheavy with lawyers, and we could be more effective in our work if—”
“Permit me, less effective by far!”
“Why less?” Paige asked, nettled. “You seem so positive.”
“Your Free Speech League can be effective only if it stays topheavy with lawyers. Your work is with courts and judges, with witnesses and juries—the devil with adding members who cannot work inside courts and who are not qualified to deal with judges and juries.”
“I see what Stefan means, I think,” Alida said dubiously. Alexandra agreed, but a wary expectancy stood in her heart.
“I see too, and I disagree with every word of it,” Evan said flatly. “You’re dismissing writers pretty lightly, and editors and lecturers. You also overlook the weight of what people think after they read and hear them.”
“Of course not.” Ivarin stressed each word. “Of course I am not.”
“But you do dismiss them from our Board,” Evan said, also with extra vigor. “Rather high-handed, I would say.”
“They would add nothing but talk and more talk.” Stefan leaned forward across the table. “They’d be nice willing believers in free speech who would hamstring your specialists in endless ropes of words and clever suggestions. Throw them out in advance, I tell you.”
Suddenly Evan Paige laughed. It was the laugh of a man amused and pleased, free of irony, free of resentment.
Alexandra glanced quickly at him and then at Alida. Both of the Paiges were worked up, in much the same way as they got worked up over pacifism, about which she and Stefan could never agree with them. It was a level-temperature “worked up” that was as foreign to Stefan or to herself as cool water to boiling oil. A moment ago, when Evan had been irritated, and showed it, he still was anchored to some solid reserve underneath. With the Paiges, the fear of a scene never occurred to you. It was remarkable.
Was this one more result of being born in America instead of in excitable Russia? For a moment there stirred in her the old forgotten sense of apology about being “a foreigner among real Americans.”
“You fooled me, Stefan, by your sudden attack,” Evan said. “But I just remembered the basic point: you did say you would help.”
“I was never refusing that, you understand,” Ivarin said. His words were quietly spoken again, as if in a victory he did not want to press. “If there is a free-speech case someday, that you are angry about, you might perhaps like me to write about it.” He glanced at Evan with a new gleam in his eyes, and added, “Even though I’m not also on your Board, talking. You follow me?”
Again Evan Paige laughed, but this time he stretched in his chair, his left hand kneading the back of his neck as if it had felt cramped for a long time.
Aloud he said only, “Yes, I might like it, Stiva.” He thought, We are so different, but at bottom we’re allies.
Upstairs Fee said to
Fran, “Why does Mrs. Paige stay so thin, while Mama stays so fat?”
“Keep quiet,” Fran answered from the doorway. “I think Mr. Paige and Papa are having a fight. It would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“You’re spooky,” Fee said, trying to see how Shag would look in her navy-blue middy. When the flannel touched his ears, he flung himself free of middy and Fee both. She righted herself on the floor, and he lay full length beside her, his tail thumping, his dark eyes fixed on hers.
At the door, Fran said, “Shag, stop that noise,” but it was no use. That one promising flare-up downstairs had led nowhere; now they were all back to company-is-here voices; Papa never shouted at the Paiges or anybody Christian the way he shouted at the family or people from the paper or the unions.
“Can’t Mama stop being fat ever?” Fee asked when Fran finally deserted the doorway.
“She’s not fat. She’s just stretched out.”
“What stretches her?”
“I’ve told you a million times, and you can’t remember a thing.”
“You haven’t told me a million times! You don’t ever finish.”
Fran sighed in exaggerated woe. “All those baby questions.”
“They’re not baby! You just want to get my goat.”
Fran waved four fingers languidly, and then took up her nail-buffer, still unmended. She pried its steel hoop off and tried shifting the chamois so that the grey nubbled part would move off dead center and be replaced by a smoother part. But then she could not slip the hoop back. “Pull on this side, will you?” she said. “Then maybe it’ll stay put while I get this metal thing back on.”
“If you tell me, I’ll pull it for you,” Fee said, looking at the buffer with professional competence. The steel hoop fell to the floor and in despair Fran said, “Oh God, I just hate the old thing.” Fee took the denuded buffer from Fran’s discouraged grasp, saying conversationally, “What did stretch Mama out?” Her conciliatory tone implied, This is a fair offer; accept it and it’ll be good for both of us.
“When you’re having a baby,” Fran started tentatively.
“The baby is inside you,” Fee said energetically. “Don’t start with that stupid old stuff. But Mrs. Paige had a baby inside her twice, and she didn’t get stretched.”
Fran was nonplused at this crisp exposition and hesitated over her next words. At once Fee set down the buffer.
“Go on,” she ordered. “Why didn’t she?”
“Mrs. Paige was allowed to wear a special thing,” Fran said, “and Mama wasn’t. That’s why Mrs. Paige didn’t and Mama did.”
“What sort of special thing?”
“A maternity corset.”
“Why don’t you stretch in it?”
“It holds up your stomach when you get bigger and bigger, the way Joan got. Remember?”
“Sure I do. Did Joan wear it? I never saw it.”
“Joan wouldn’t leave it around where anybody could see it. They’re horrible big pink things with a million laces up the back and a sort of pouchy balloon up front.”
Fran made a face and Fee said, “Icky.” She was pressing the hoop in place, along one side of the frame, and now she gripped an edge of the dirty chamois with her teeth, pulling back on it hard. The hoop clicked; the chamois held; though the tapered ends of the buffer were uncovered, the buffing center was smoothly yellow.
“Goody,” Fran said admiringly. “Oh, Fee, you’re grand.”
“Right up in front of you like this?” Fee said, touching her finger tips and extending her curved arms forward as far as they would go.
“Not up at your shoulders. It has to hold you up so the baby won’t stretch and sag you way way way down to your knees.”
Fee again said, “Icky,” and looked down at her knees apprehensively as if she were fearful that her own small stomach would be billowing about her kneecaps.
Fran said, “Not exactly knees, either. It straps you up under, and holds you up so your stomach won’t go floppy forever. Like this.”
Fran placed her arms hard against her sides, elbows close in over her hipbones, making a basket-like circle of her arms, a sling to support a mighty weight.
Fee watched in total interest. “You’re a good explainer,” she said warmly. “I wish I could just ask you one tiny other thing.”
“Well, you can’t,” Fran said.
“Why not?”
“Because.”
Fee lunged at the buffer but Fran said, “You know something?”
“I don’t want to hear it.”
“I think Papa has a crush on Mrs. Paige.”
“You what?” Fee cried out.
“I think he’s got a real crush on her,” Fran repeated, relishing the sensation she had made. “And I think she has a crush on him. Did you hear her down there? ‘Oh, Stefan, my dear, you are just the man for it, just the man they want.’” Fran let her voice climb, in mimicry of Alida.
Fee looked stricken. “Don’t do that, Franny,” she said.
“And did you see her blush while she said it to him? She always blushes now when she so much as looks at him.”
Fee clapped her palms to her ears and shouted, “I said don’t.”
“Old people can fall in love too,” Fran went on authoritatively, “and I think Papa has a crush on her for fair, and—”
“He couldn’t have,” Fee whispered. “He just couldn’t.” Suddenly she burst into tears. She heard Fran’s exasperated, “For Pete’s sake,” but she couldn’t help it.
The idea was so horrible, so overwhelming that her heart exploded with pain. Papa couldn’t have a crush on Mrs. Paige, he couldn’t, he couldn’t. He loved Mama, and if he had a crush on anybody else in the whole world, then he couldn’t love Mama any more.
A desolation struck at her, over and around her like a frozen lake closing over her head. In this bottomless icy sinking, she knew Fran was talking to her, but the separate words could not get through the numb and icy skin encasing her.
Fran suddenly put an arm around her. “I’m sorry I said it, Fee—I didn’t think you’d take it so awfully.”
Fee leaned against her. It was new to have Fran so sorry about something she had done to her, but she couldn’t stop crying. She saw her middy blouse on the floor and at last she put it on again, as if it were morning and she were dressing for school. Then she started for the door; not knowing why she wanted to get out of the room or where she wanted to go.
“Fee,” Fran said in an urgent whisper, “are you going down and do anything crazy?”
“No.”
“It’ll be terrible if you do.”
“I won’t.” She started slowly down the stairs, holding the banister and going down one at a time, still now knowing why she was going. She would not go into the dining room where they were, but she could not turn around and go back either. Every third or fourth breath she took came out in a long pulling flutter, but she opened her lips, so it made no sound. On the bottom step, she could hear them: they were talking about the frightful strikes in the woolen mills in New England, and the lecture Papa had given up there, and the extra lectures he was going to go back and give every minute he could until the strike was won.
“It’s been nearly a month already, hasn’t it? How long can those poor people hold out?”
That was Mrs. Paige, in her familiar soft voice, and the sound of it pulled Fee down from the step to the little hall and past the edge of the open dining-room door.
Mrs. Paige was facing her, but she wasn’t looking toward the doorway. Her eyes were unhappy, and she sighed, and made little sounds of worry and sympathy. But the one she was talking to was Mama, not Papa. The one she was looking at was Mama, not Papa. It was Mama’s answer she was waiting for, about how long the poor people could hold out. She wasn’t even bothering with Papa.
And Papa wasn’t bothering with her. He was standing over by the window, making a cigarette, and talking to Mr. Paige.
Suddenly Fee’s heart jumped and danced and g
listened. They were all just the way they always were, so it wasn’t true. She raced upstairs to tell Fran.
ELEVEN
DURING THE NIGHT IT snowed, so heavily that neither the morning milk nor the newspaper had yet arrived when they waked up. For the first time since they had moved into the apartment, the heat coming up was slow and inadequate, knocking against the pipes in thumps of protest that the task assigned on this bitter morning was too great.
Garry said, “Don’t get up yet. Let’s have a fire in here and feel pampered.”
“Ooh,” Letty said.
He built a husky fire. In the small fireplace in their bedroom, the logs they always used seemed massive, but this was the first fire they had ever had while they were in bed, and they found it intimate and charming.
“I could bring our breakfast in here,” Letty said, not moving. She gazed past him to their stretch of garden. “Maybe you can’t get to the lab at all today,” she said. “Just look at it out there.”
The garden lay foamy and glistening under their windows. Where drifts had sloped up against the dark-green wood fence separating the Tenth Street gardens from their own and from their neighbors, he could have stood in snow up to his shoulders. For a moment, as he put on his bathrobe near the frost-traced windows, he wished he could keep away from Aldrich today, and wander about the city’s muted, fluffy streets instead.
A brisk ring at the bell told him the newsboy had come at last, and he ran down for the paper, hoping as always that he wouldn’t be caught in his bathrobe by the owner of the house or by another tenant. Every morning since they had moved in last summer, he had run the same risk.
The Morning World welcomed the snow too, it appeared; its front page had been blown nearly clear of its usual grey freight of warnings and reports and threats from Germany and Italy and Turkey and the rest of Europe. There was the fresh sweep of the blizzard instead, pictures of impassable streets, of stranded carriages, hatted and cloaked in billowing white, of trolleys and store windows grotesque or beautiful in arabesques and swirls of snow and splinters of ice.
He raced up the steps in the draughty hall of the old mansion. The headlines said the blizzard would probably last until night and the cold wave most of the week. He was glad. It was a sort of recess provided by God. He had still not discussed the continuing rumors at the lab with Letty.
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