Her brother hesitated. “Say,” he said finally, “you really going to marry this guy?”
“I really am,” Margaret said.
“You know what you’re doing to your father and mother?” her brother said.
Margaret walked over to the dresser and picked up her cigarette. “You sound just like Dad,” she said, “voice and everything. Now tell me I’m ungrateful and silly and don’t know what I’m doing, and that I’ll be home trying to beg pardon in a week.”
“I don’t think you will,” her brother said. Margaret turned and looked at him. “You’re too smart,” he went on, “you went to college.”
“I met him in college,” Margaret said.
“I know,” her brother said. “If I’d gone to college maybe I would have met a nice girl.”
“Instead of the one you did meet.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Bobbie.” Her brother frowned and stared firmly at Margaret’s suitcase on the bed. “She’s a nice kid. That’s why we got married.”
Margaret turned around to look at him. “What did you say?” she demanded. “Did you say you had married that little tramp?”
Her brother looked up and then down again, and Margaret suddenly began to laugh. “Do you know what you’re doing to your father and mother?”
“I figured I’d tell them right afterward,” her brother said, “but then you came home with this business about going out to Chicago to marry this guy, and that was bad enough.”
“So I killed your story?” Margaret said. “What are you going to do?”
“Tell them later on, when they get used to you.”
“They’re going to get a shock.”
“Margaret,” her brother asked, “listen, what’s wrong with them? No one else has children like us.”
“What’s wrong with us?” Margaret said. “We’re good, honest, middle-class people belonging to a country club and owning one car. I went to college because I wanted to, and you didn’t go to college because Dad thought you ought to go to work. We play a family game of golf and a family game of bridge and not one of us ever said a nice word to any of the others. What do you think is wrong with us?”
“Bobbie says Dad was too strict with us,” her brother said.
“Maybe so,” Margaret said. “When were you married?”
“About a week ago.”
“Where’s Bobbie now?”
“With her family. They know about it. Her sister went with us.”
“Should have taken me,” Margaret said. “I would have liked to be there.”
“I’d like to be at your wedding,” her brother said. “We never talked like this before, did we?”
“Why should we?” Margaret said. “Nothing ever happened to us before.”
She closed the suitcase and locked it, putting it on the floor. Her brother came over and helped her on with her coat, and she picked up the suitcase and looked around.
“Did I forget anything?” she asked.
“Look,” her brother said, “do you want any money?”
Right out of the movies, Margaret thought. “Thanks,” she said, “he sent me plenty.”
“I have some cash with me,” her brother insisted.
“Keep it for Bobbie,” Margaret said, “she’ll probably need it.”
He followed her to the door of the bedroom. “Well,” he said. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “Good luck.”
“Give Bobbie my love,” Margaret said, and started down the stairs.
Her father came out of the living room with her mother in back of him. Margaret went straight on toward the front door, but her father held out his hand.
“Wait a minute,” he said. “You won’t change your mind?”
“You don’t know what you’re doing,” her mother said.
“I’m really going,” Margaret said to her father.
“A man none of us knows,” her mother said, “out in Chicago.”
“You can always come home, daughter,” her father said, “we’ll always make you welcome.”
“Thanks,” Margaret said.
“Margaret,” her father said, “let me say this once more. Your mother and I are terribly hurt by all this, and yet we are trying to do only what is best for you. Maybe this news, so sudden and everything, has surprised us a little—”
“You and your brother,” her mother said, “always such obedient children.”
“Listen,” Margaret said, turning around to her father and putting down the suitcase, “listen, you want to hear something that will really surprise you?”
ARCH-CRIMINAL
I SUPPOSE THE MOTHERS of most twelve-year-old boys live with the uneasy conviction that their sons are embarked upon a secret life of crime. In my case, this belief about my son Laurie is shared—not without reason—by Mrs. John R. Simpkins, of upper New York State, whose opinions on Laurie are even more forceful than those held by myself and, to a lesser extent, by my husband, who has recently been doing research into eighteenth-century crime, and points out that at that time all twelve-year-old boys were criminals—or, as he has it, cross coves—and many of them, as a matter of fact, were named Simpkins. “The gooseberry trick,” he says reassuringly, “glomming the grapevine.”
I refer, of course, to the Mrs. John R. Simpkins who lived next door to us the summer when Laurie was nine, and across the street from the Rowland boys, although of course when we rented the house for the summer we had no idea the Rowland boys were going to turn out to live nearby. Mrs. Simpkins still writes to me occasionally, when there is any news about people we used to know, and although she never comes right out and asks about Laurie’s criminal record, and makes no mention of the less savory aspects of our six weeks next door, she writes in her most recent letter that she thought of us at once when she came across the newspaper story about the Rowland boy, clipping enclosed. In the next paragraph she says that her own dear little boy is receiving many compliments on his little poems in the school paper, and what is dear little Laurie doing these days? Still interested in all kinds of sports, Mrs. Simpkins supposes, and she wonders if he is as “lively” as ever?
“Look at this,” I said, slamming the letter and the clipping down on the desk before my husband.
He regarded the clipping absently. “Got the torn on him, did they?”
“That woman ought to be locked up as a malicious gossip,” I said. “I can imagine what that whole town thinks of us.”
“The Rowlands—”
“Well,” I said reasonably, “if she says it about the Rowlands it’s probably true, because you know as well as I do that that older boy of theirs was never anything but a—”
“Choir bird,” my husband said.
“But poor little Laurie—taken in by those juvenile delinquents—just following along and doing what they told him—”
“An outfielder,” my husband suggested. “The outfielder on that last job.”
I snatched my letter and the clipping and stormed out of the study. “Maybe,” I said over my shoulder, “if Laurie had a father who spoke English—”
“That’s what you said to Mrs. Rowland,” my husband remarked amiably.
It was, too, almost. I went into the kitchen and decided to get even with Mrs. Simpkins and the Rowlands and my husband by serving vegetable soup for lunch again today, and put the cover on the saucepan wishing I had Spike Rowland’s head inside. All I had said to Mrs. Rowland was that perhaps Spike’s father should try to be a good example to his boys, and that was the only time I ever heard Mrs. Rowland laugh out loud. I never met Mr. Rowland myself, but Laurie did.
Spike was thirteen, Billy Rowland was ten, and Laurie was nine. The dear little Simpkins boy next door was about six months older than Laurie, and his young sister and our daughter Jannie were devoted friends all that summer. I thought it would be nice if Laurie and dear little Tommy Simpkins played together, and went so far as to invite the Simpkins children over for supper the first week we were there, b
ut the party was a complete failure as far as Laurie was concerned, since after supper Tommy Simpkins settled down to play house with his sister and Jannie, and Laurie wandered outdoors in search of amusement, and met the Rowland boys shooting out streetlights.
We noticed, of course, that Laurie’s general deportment had taken a turn for the worse as the summer wore on. He was impertinent, dirty, callous, and really treated little Tommy Simpkins most unkindly. He also became most evasive about his activities, and we only found out about the fire at all because he came home one evening with his jacket scorched and soot all over his face.
“What?” I demanded, dropping the jacket to seize Laurie and turn him around and around for signs of burns. “What?”
Laurie shook his head irritably. “I told him you’d be mad,” he said.
“You were right. I am mad. Told who?”
“Spike. I told him he should use his own jacket.”
“What for?”
“To put out the fire.”
“What fire?”
“The one in our tree house.”
“A fire? In your tree house? In our backya—is it out?”
“It’s out all right,” Laurie said as I turned and headed wildly for the back door. “Nothing to worry about now.”
I sat down, counted to a hundred while Laurie absentmindedly rubbed soot on the curtains, and then, composed and lighting a cigarette with hands that shook only slightly, I said, “Now, Laurence, tell me all about this please. Your tree house caught fire?”
“Not at first.”
“What do you mean?”
“It was all right before Billy poured on the kerosene.”
“What?” I said faintly.
“He said it would burn better, but then the tree house burned too.”
“What started the fire?”
“Spike did.”
“Why?”
“To cook the potatoes.”
“Potatoes?”
“The ones he hooked from old man Martin’s store.”
“He stole potatoes?”
“Well… he sort of had to.”
“Why—why—why?”
“Because of Billy. So old man Martin would chase Spike instead.”
“Young man,” I said, “your father will be home at five o’clock, and you will spend the time until he comes in the bathtub. He will speak to you and decide what is to be done. I shall inform him that you have been associating with thieves and arsonists. Upstairs.”
“No bath,” said Laurie sullenly.
“Bath,” I said. “Just one thing, though—what made Spike think that Mr. Martin wanted to chase Billy?”
“Because Billy put the cat in the meat counter. But I didn’t do anything,” Laurie said. “I just stood there.”
Unfortunately Mrs. Simpkins had seen the fire in the tree house, and she made a number of fairly pointed remarks about little boys who played quietly with their little sisters as opposed to little boys who ran around with roughnecks. We absolutely forbade Laurie to see, contact, signal, or remember the Rowland boys, and it was the next morning that I dropped over and had my chat with Mrs. Rowland. She was a gray, tired woman, and she came to the door carrying the baby. Both of them looked weary and reluctant. I told her as politely as I could that I thought diplomatic relations between our houses must cease, and she nodded, sighing, as though we had been the last family who still spoke to them and now we were going, too. I asked if she would mention to her sons that their friendship with Laurie must be brought to an immediate halt.
“I’ll tell them,” she said, and the baby looked at me cynically.
I said that luckily the tree was not badly damaged, because of course we had only rented the house for the summer; “I am a little surprised,” I added, “that a boy Spike’s age would encourage such a thing.”
“You are?” she said.
“Perhaps Mr. Rowland—”
She stepped back. “What about him?” she demanded, clutching the baby tighter.
“I meant only that perhaps Mr. Rowland could speak to the boys. Tell them that this kind of thing is dangerous.”
“What kind of thing?” she said. “He never did anything, and you better not say he did.”
“Well, if you call setting fire to a tree—”
“Oh, you mean Spikey,” she said. “He’s just a kid—I don’t worry about him. But you better not say anything against his father—he didn’t go setting fire to trees.”
“I am only,” I told her with vast patience, “suggesting that perhaps Mr. Rowland should set his sons a good example.”
It was, as I say, the only time I ever heard Mrs. Rowland laugh.
We kept Laurie in solitary for a week. During that time his behavior was exemplary, and his morale astonishingly high. He read the greater part of “The Hardy Boys at Eagle Lodge,” and spent a lot of time painting, although he declined a proposed correspondence with the Simpkins boy, who suggested that poor Laurie might enjoy playing chess by mail.
We believed optimistically that Laurie was a reformed character. I told my husband, on the last day of Laurie’s confinement, that actually one good scare like that could probably mark a child for life, and my husband pointed out that kids frequently have an instinctive desire to follow the good example rather than the bad, once they find out which is which. We agreed that a good moral background and thorough grounding in the Hardy Boys would always tell in the long run.
The next day the policeman came. He knocked on the front door while my husband was reading the Sunday papers and I was basting the roast. He asked for Laurie.
“Laurie?” I said, and my husband said, “What?”
“You got a boy about ten years old?”
“Yes,” my husband said, and I added defensively that Laurie was only nine.
“Well,” the policeman said, and he seemed embarrassed. “I got kids of my own,” he explained. “Girl ten, boy six.”
We waited tensely, and after a minute he went on. “I better talk to the boy, I guess.”
“Now, look here,” I said, “Laurie didn’t do anything,” and my husband said, “What did he do?”
“Well, there’s been a little trouble,” the policeman said. “Your boy seems to have been mixed up in a little trouble.”
A soft step on the stairs silenced him. Laurie, having ascertained the nature of our guest, was going back up to his room. His father went out and captured him, and when he was brought in, looking sullen and nervous, I had to resist a strong impulse to run over and gather him up bodily, crying out that he was my little baby and no one was going to touch him while I was around. Luckily the policeman spoke first.
“Now, then, son,” he said. “Let’s hear about this concrete mixer.”
Laurie started to say, “What concrete mixer?” but caught his father’s eye and said instead, “It was just an old concrete mixer, is all.”
“Who turned it on?” the policeman asked.
“Spike,” said Laurie almost inaudibly.
“Were you there?”
Laurie looked from me to his father to the policeman. “I guess so,” he said.
“How did Spike start the concrete mixer?”
Laurie swallowed unhappily. “Wires,” he said.
“Wires?”
“He twisted some wires together,” Laurie said. “He said he was going to show me and Billy how you started a concrete mixer.”
The policeman leaned forward. “Which wires?” he demanded. “You remember, son?”
Laurie shook his head, and the policeman sat back uneasily.
“Spike got inside,” Laurie insisted. “We were just standing there.”
The policeman regarded his fingernails casually. “Just where is this fellow Spike right now?” he asked. Laurie shook his head. “Well, anyplace you can think of where he might be?” Laurie shook his head. “You got any idea where he usually hides?”
“Whyn’t you ask Billy?” Laurie said.
“He doesn’t know e
ither.” The policeman sighed. “We’d sort of like to find that boy,” he said.
“You going to arrest him?” Laurie asked.
The policeman hesitated. “As a matter of fact,” he said at last, reluctantly, “I guess mostly we want him to go and turn the concrete mixer off again. The foreman’s gone out of town,” he explained to us, “and there’s no one around can get the blasted thing turned off and it is just down there grinding and grinding away. Look, son,” he said again pleadingly to Laurie, “you think of any where—anywhere at all—that kid might be?”
“Nope,” Laurie said.
“Why don’t you ask the boy’s father?” I said.
Laurie snickered. The policeman glanced at me briefly and compassionately and then said to Laurie, “This all checks in pretty well with what the other boy—Billy—tells us. I don’t think you’ll be in any real trouble about it, but I think we better, you and me and Dad here, have a man-to-man talk about kids who get into mischief.”
The application of this remark seemed pretty clear, so I excused myself and got back to my roast. After about half an hour I heard my husband and Laurie saying goodbye to the policeman at the front door. From the kitchen window I could see Mrs. Simpkins peering out of her kitchen window to see the policeman leave our house.
We got away fairly lightly; Laurie laboriously constructed a written apology for the company that owned the concrete mixer, which had finally burned itself out and gone off by itself. My husband offered to pay our share of the damage, but since Laurie had not been actually involved in the turning on of the concrete mixer the company declined, and the owner actually patted Laurie on the head when Laurie tearfully proffered his allowance for the week he had been confined. So far as I know, no attempt was ever made to collect from Mr. Rowland.
The clipping Mrs. Simpkins sent me, three years later, said only that Spike Rowland had been sentenced to two years in prison for stealing a large sum of money from the movie theater where he worked as an usher, and driving off with it in a stolen car. The father of the convicted youth was identified as John Rowland, owner of Honest John’s Used Car Lot.
When Laurie came home from school and took his place at the lunch table, I set the clipping beside his plate without comment. “Vegetable soup?” he said.
Just an Ordinary Day: Stories Page 13