I read the letter twice and then, in an exaltation of pure fury, went to the phone and put through a call, person to person, to Mr. S. B. Fairchild, of the Fairchild Department Store in New York. I waited, gripping the phone, while the phone rang at Fairchild’s, and then through the series of connections that took my call from the main switchboard to the switchboard on the eleventh floor, to the credit office line, to the telephone of the secretary, to the credit office, to the office of Mr. S. B. Fairchild, to the secretary of Mr. S. B. Fairchild, to the confidential assistant to Mr. S. B. Fairchild, to the confidential secretary of Mr. S. B. Fairchild. For a while it looked as if we were stopped dead at the confidential secretary to Mr. S. B. Fairchild, but then I said if I did not get Mr. S. B. Fairchild on my long-distance person-to-person call I would put the call through every ten minutes for the rest of the day, making every attempt to tie up all telephone lines to Fairchild’s Department Store. After a minute a busy-sounding man’s voice got on the phone and said, “Well? Well?”
I told him who I was and said that I was calling about my bill.
“If you’re calling about your bill you should be talking to Accounts Due,” Mr. Fairchild said. “I’m a very busy man.”
“I’m calling because you wrote me a letter,” I said.
“The Business Office—”
“I ordered a pewter tray and some nesting wastebaskets and three plaid-seated garden chairs and you said—”
“If you want to place an order you should be talking to Telephone Service,” Mr. Fairchild said. “I cannot be expected to personally handle all—”
“I want my pewter tray and my plaid-seated garden chairs.”
“Or else Personal Shoppers down on the main floor.”
“I refuse, I flatly and absolutely refuse, to pay my bill.”
“Why don’t I connect you with Complaints?” Mr. Fairchild said hopefully. “I’m a very busy man.”
“I answered an ad for a tape recorder—”
“All of that material goes to Ad Response. That is not this office.”
“But the tape recorder was broken.”
“Then you want Repairs, on the main floor near the Avenue entrance.”
“No. The tape recorder was no good. I didn’t want it.”
“Then why didn’t you send it back?”
“I did send it back. I sent it back nearly two years—”
“Then it’s Returns you want, on the ninth floor. I cannot see why all these petty problems are pushed up to me; I have enough to do without—”
“I have written you nineteen letters, and it has cost me, altogether, counting an electric clock-making set, nearly forty-five dollars not to get that tape recorder. Do you think there is any merchandise in your store worth forty-five dollars not to get?”
“Office Equipment,” said Mr. Fairchild, confused. “Eighth floor.”
“I insist on satisfaction,” I said.
“I am sorry,” he said with dignity. “Are you sure you have the right store?”
I hung up and sat down to write, once more, to Mr. Fairchild. I wrote—since it was the last time—a complete and detailed account of the entire transaction of the tape recorder. I enclosed a copy of the receipt, drawn to scale, and a note signed by the man in the music store stating that the tape recorder I had brought him to repair had clearly been sent out by mistake. I reordered the pewter tray, the nesting wastebaskets, and the plaid-seated garden chairs. I included the name and address of the friends who had brought the tape recorder to Fairchild’s, and finished with a paragraph telling about how my husband and I wanted to sit quietly in years to come and listen to the voices of our children. My letter covered three pages, and when I sealed it I felt that there was nothing that needed to be added to give Mr. Fairchild the whole picture on the tape recorder. I took the letter to the post office, and said that I wanted to send it by registered mail, to ensure that it should be delivered only to Mr. S. B. Fairchild, at the Fairchild Department Store. The postmaster suggested that I ask for a receipt on the letter, which must be signed by the person addressed and then returned to me, so I could be sure that only the person addressed had received the letter. I paid seventy-seven cents postage.
Two days later I got back my postal receipt. In the line reading Signature of Addressee someone had written in Fairchild Department Stores. In the line underneath, which my postmaster had crossed out, there was a signature reading Jane Kelly, sec’y. At the top of the receipt was stamped DELIVER TO ADDRESSEE ONLY and at the bottom of the receipt was stamped DELIVER TO ADDRESSEE ONLY. I took the receipt over to the postmaster and showed it to him, and he was surprised.
“That’s no way to run a post office,” he said.
“What should I do?” I asked him.
“Well.” He thought. “I guess we can’t get the letter back now,” he said. “This secretary, whatever her name is, the one who signed it down here, she’s got your letter now.”
“And Mr. Fairchild won’t get it?”
“Tell you what to do,” he said. “You got to turn in a complaint on this, see? So you write a letter to me, postmaster here, and I’ll send it on. Then you write another letter to this here Fairchild, and I think when they get your complaint in the post office department, well, they’ll let you send the second letter for nothing.”
I went home and wrote a letter explaining what had happened, and I addressed it to our local postmaster and then I took it down to the post office and put a three-cent stamp on it and handed it to him through the window, and he cancelled the stamp and opened the letter and read it and said that was fine, he would send it right on.
One week later—not quite two years since we had first ordered the tape recorder, since our seventeenth anniversary was still nearly a month off and I was getting my husband a sword cane—I went down to pick up the mail.
There was a letter from Fairchild’s, signed S. B. Fairchild, saying that my credit everywhere would suffer if they had to turn my account over to a collection agency. There was a letter from the United States Postal Department enclosing three forms to be filled out explaining misdelivery of registered mail. There was a letter from the manager of the telephone company saying that it was against their policy to continue carrying unpaid bills, and unless charges of one dollar and sixty-nine cents were remitted, telephone service would be discontinued. There was a letter in a plain envelope from the baby-sitter’s uncle asking “Money troubles got YOU down? Because I’m WAITING to HELP!” There was a letter from the repair department of Fairchild’s Department Store. They were extremely sorry that repairing my tape recorder had taken a little longer than their original estimate. There had been a slight delay in getting parts. The machine was put in order now, however, and waiting for me; would I please pick it up right away? Because after ten days they would not be responsible.
DECK THE HALLS
IT WAS EIGHT O’CLOCK in the evening, Christmas Eve, and Mr. and Mrs. Williams were decorating their Christmas tree. It was the first Christmas tree they had had since they were married, but this year their little girl was two years old, and Mrs. Williams had thought that it was time they started making a real Christmas for her to remember when she grew up. Mrs. Williams had bought some ornaments at the five and ten, and a lot of little toys to hang on the tree, and Mr. Williams had brought out a kitchen chair and was standing on it, hanging things on the top branches. All of the baby’s relatives and friends had sent lovely things, which Mrs. Williams intended to pile lavishly under the tree, and Mr. and Mrs. Williams had bought an enormous teddy bear, taller by a head than the baby herself, which would be the first thing she would see in the morning.
When the tree was finished, with the packages and the teddy bear underneath, Mrs. Williams stood back and looked at it, holding her breath with pleasure. “Bob,” she said, “it looks lovely. Like a dream of Christmas.”
Mr. Williams eased himself off the chair gingerly. “Looks good,” he admitted.
Mrs. Williams went ove
r and moved an ornament to a higher branch. “She’ll come running into the room and we’ll have it all lighted up,” she said happily, “and it will be something for her to remember all year round.”
“We used to have fine Christmases when I was a kid,” Mr. Williams said, “all the family together, and a turkey and everything.”
The doorbell rang, and Mrs. Williams went to open it. “I could only get a goose for tomorrow,” she said over her shoulder, “not many turkeys this year.” When she opened the door there were two little girls standing on the porch, snow in their hair and on their shoulders, and both looking up at her. The taller of the two was holding a folded piece of paper, which she held out to Mrs. Williams.
“My mother said to give you this,” she said to Mrs. Williams.
Mrs. Williams frowned, puzzled, looking down at the children, wondering if they lived in the neighborhood. “Come in,” she said, “don’t stand out there in the cold.” She closed the door behind the little girls, and they stood expectantly in the hall, their eyes on the Christmas tree beyond the archway into the living room. Mrs. Williams, still puzzled, opened the paper and started to read it aloud.
“Dear neighbor,” she read, “these are my two little girls. The oldest is eight years of age and the little one is five…” Mrs. Williams suddenly stopped reading aloud and shut her lips tight, reading on to herself: “If you do not want to give them anything please don’t bother, but if you do Jeanie wears a size four shoe children’s size and Helen needs something to wear to school this winter. Even if you do not give them anything, a Merry Christmas.” Mrs. Williams finished reading and looked at the children for a minute. “Bob,” she said.
Mr. Williams came out from the living room, and Mrs. Williams handed him the note and turned again to the children. “You sit down there for a minute,” she said, indicating the leather bench in the hall, “and I’m going to get you something hot to drink to warm you up, and then we’ll see what we can do about this letter of your mother’s.” She turned to the littler child. “You’re Jeanie?” The girl nodded solemnly. “Well, you just let me take your muffler off and sit you up here on this bench, and then we’ll have some lovely hot cocoa…” While she talked, Mrs. Williams had put the little girl on the bench and taken off her coat, and the older girl, watching, finally took off her coat and sat beside her sister. Mrs. Williams turned around to Mr. Williams, who was standing helplessly, holding the letter. “You amuse these youngsters,” she said, “while I run out and make some cocoa.”
The children sat on the bench looking at the Christmas tree, and Mr. Williams squatted on the floor beside them. “Well,” he said, “you’re a little bigger than my little girl, so I hardly know what to say to you…”
Mrs. Williams went out into the kitchen and put some milk on to heat while she arranged a dish of oatmeal cookies and two cups and saucers on a tray. When she had made the cocoa, she put the pot on the tray and carried it out into the hall. The littler girl was laughing at Mr. Williams, and the older girl was watching with a smile. Mr. Williams was telling them a story and Mrs. Williams waited with the cocoa while he put a quick ending on it and stood up. She handed each little girl a cup and filled it with cocoa, and then gave them each a cookie. “That will make you nice and warm,” she said. “Believe I’ll have some, too,” Mr. Williams said.
Mrs. Williams went back into the kitchen and got two more cups, and brought them out and filled them, and she and Mr. Williams sat on the floor drinking, and Mr. Williams made faces that made little Jeanie laugh so that she could hardly hold her cup. When she had finished her cocoa, Mrs. Williams went upstairs and got out an old coat of her own, and a couple of sweaters and a warm bathrobe. She put them in an old suitcase so the children could carry them, and tore off a page from the telephone pad and scribbled on it: “I have nothing that will fit the children, but maybe you can use these. Or you can make them over.” She slipped the note in with the clothes and came back downstairs to the children, who had begun to talk to Mr. Williams.
“The second grade,” the older one was saying shyly.
“Well, isn’t that fine,” Mr. Williams said. “I bet you’re lots smarter than Helen, though,” he said to the smaller girl.
“I’m smarter than her,” Helen said.
The smaller girl giggled. “Old Helen has to go to school every day,” she said.
When Mrs. Williams came back into the hall, Mr. Williams stood up and turned away from the children. He took out his wallet, selected a five-dollar bill, and held it up to Mrs. Williams, who nodded. Mr. Williams went over and slipped it into the older girl’s hand. “Don’t you lose that, now,” he said. “Tell your mother that’s for a Christmas present for all of you.”
“Can they carry the suitcase?” Mrs. Williams asked anxiously. The older girl slipped off the bench and picked up the suitcase. Even with the coat in it, it wasn’t very heavy, and she would manage it all right, Mrs. Williams thought. Mrs. Williams helped the smaller girl down off the bench and began putting her coat on again.
“Thank you very much,” the older girl said to Mr. Williams.
“Nonsense,” Mr. Williams said, “it’s Christmastime, isn’t it?” The older girl smiled and reached for the suitcase.
“Wait a minute,” Mrs. Williams said. She ran in to the Christmas tree and took off a couple of candy canes, and brought them back to the children.
They accepted them silently, but suddenly Jeanie began to cry, taking her sister’s hand and pointing.
The older girl looked up apologetically. “It’s the teddy bear,” she said. “She just saw it this minute and she’s always wanted one.” She tried to pull her sister to the front door, but the little girl refused to move, standing and crying.
“Poor little kid,” Mr. Williams said. Mrs. Williams kneeled down beside the little girl.
“Jeanie, honey,” she said, “just listen to me for a minute. The teddy bear is pretty, but it’s for my little girl,” she finished.
Jeanie stopped crying, looking up at Mrs. Williams. “Wait,” Mrs. Williams said. She went back to the Christmas tree, Jeanie watching her eagerly, and took two little toys off the branches. It spoiled the whole balance of the tree, having them gone, but Mrs. Williams thought quickly that she could fix that later. One of the toys was a little doll, and the other was a folded piece of blanket with three very tiny dolls in it. Mrs. Williams gave the three tiny dolls to Jeanie and the larger doll to Helen. “These are for you,” she said. Jeanie held the blanket with the little dolls, looking beyond Mrs. Williams at the teddy bear.
“Thank you very much,” Helen said. “We better be going.” She hesitated, and finally said to Mrs. Williams, “Please may I have the piece of paper back now?”
Mr. Williams handed her the folded note and Helen put it in her pocket and took Jeanie’s hand.
“Merry Christmas,” she said. She picked up the suitcase in her free hand and led Jeanie to the door, which Mr. Williams opened for her. On the porch she stopped again, and turned around. “We’re going to sing a Christmas carol for you,” she said, “I learned it in school.” She began, and after a minute Jeanie joined in weakly: “Deck the hall with boughs of holly, tra la la la la…”
Mr. and Mrs. Williams stood on the porch and watched them going down the walk, singing carefully together. When they reached the street Mr. Williams stepped back inside. “Coming?” he asked.
“Merry Christmas,” Mrs. Williams called out after the children, but even to her, her voice sounded inadequate.
LORD OF THE CASTLE
IT WAS A BLACK winter’s day when I watched my father hanged. I stood, fifteen years old but too proud to show my fear before the villagers who crowded around, and watched the man I adored ascend the scaffold and take his last look at the sky and the trees and the mountains he loved.
In that ignorant little village the punishment for witchcraft was death, and not even the lord in the castle on the mountaintop was great enough to stand against the law of superstit
ion and dread. And so my father stood today before the hatred in the eyes of the villagers and went gallantly to his death.
As I stood there, alone, I could feel the secret glances that followed me, and I could almost hear the whispers—“That’s his son”—“That’s the young one”—“Yonder goes the boy who inherits the devil’s lore”—and I hated them all for their ignorance and fear. And when they brought my father out to walk the steps to his death, I came forward to stand beside him before he mounted the scaffold. I looked deep into his black eyes, haunted by the sight of things no mortal had ever seen before him, and I stood as straight as I could, and said to him clearly: “I know you are unjustly accused, Father, and those who have done it will suffer at my hand.”
But he looked at me, and smiled, and said: “It is not well to return death for death, my son. Rather hope that I shall rest quietly, and leave you in peace.” And he touched his hand to my head, and took his great signet ring from his finger and put it on mine. Then I stood watching him climb up to the platform, and as one man close by me cried out against my father: “Go back to the devil, your master!” I cried “Quiet!” and lashed out at him with the whip I carried. And the crowd moved slowly backward, sullen and murmuring, while I stood alone beside the scaffold. But I could not turn my eyes away while my father died, for I would rather have died myself than show myself, before the eyes of that crowd, a coward.
Just an Ordinary Day: Stories Page 21