Mrs. Hope leaned back in her chair and picked up the string of beads. “My dear,” she said, “you would really be surprised how much trouble there is in the world. If I can do anything to make the skies brighter for any of the poor people I meet, I have served my purpose in life.”
“I thought you might just give me some advice,” Mrs. Garden said. “You were so kind that day, and I’m afraid I don’t know anyone else. Not in New York, anyway, and I wanted to talk to someone.”
“And my little note comforted you?” Mrs. Hope said. She smiled wistfully. “This is the first time I have been allowed to see that I am doing some good. I talk to people everywhere and ask them for their names and addresses, and then when I feel that they need a friendly word, I send them a little note telling them to be of good heart.”
“I know,” Mrs. Garden said. “You told me, that day on the bus.”
“On buses and everywhere,” Mrs. Hope said. “I meet people wherever I go.”
“But you can help me,” Mrs. Garden said, “can’t you?”
Mrs. Hope smiled and put her hand on Mrs. Garden’s. “Let me show you,” she said. She got up again and went over to the table by the bed. From a drawer in it she took a big scrapbook. “I make copies of all my letters,” she said, “so I can send more to the same people if I think they need it.” She handed the big book to Mrs. Garden. Then she took the desk chair and brought it over. “Wait till you see,” she said, taking half of the book in her lap. On the first page a slip of paper was pasted with “A word to the wise is sufficient” written on it in Mrs. Hope’s careful hand. “Here is my first letter—to a boy who wanted to change his job,” she said. “See, here, I tell him to be careful in his decision.”
“Don’t think I’m the type of person who’s always complaining,” Mrs. Garden said, turning to look at Mrs. Hope. “But we had so many plans for our life together.”
“This is odd,” Mrs. Hope said, turning the page. “You ought to look at this one. Here was a girl with your same situation. Let me see, what did I say to her?” She leaned forward to read the letter.
“I write to him every other day,” Mrs. Garden said, “and I have to write today. I want to have my mind made up.”
“Of course you do,” Mrs. Hope said. “This is one I wrote to Mr. Adolf Hitler. When he first started killing and rampaging, that was. I said for him to look into his heart and find love.” She touched the letter pasted on the page. “I don’t very often write like that, but some people are so much in need of a thoughtful word.”
Mrs. Garden’s lips trembled and she put her hand up to her mouth. “I suppose everyone gets desperate sometimes,” she said.
“Everyone does, my dear.” Mrs. Hope waited a minute, then closed the scrapbook and went over and put it carefully away in the drawer. “You haven’t eaten any candy,” she said. She took the plate and passed it to Mrs. Garden, who shook her head. “I wish I could ask you to stay for lunch,” Mrs. Hope said, “but I only have a sandwich and a cup of tea here in my room.”
“I just had breakfast,” Mrs. Garden said. She stood up and picked up her pocketbook. “It’s been very nice,” she said.
“I’ve enjoyed seeing you again,” Mrs. Hope said. “Maybe we’ll meet again on a bus sometime.”
“I hope so,” Mrs. Garden said. She went toward the door.
Mrs. Hope followed her. “I can’t tell you how comforting it’s been,” she said, “knowing how much good my little letters bring.”
Mrs. Garden opened the door. “I’m sure they do,” she said. “Well, goodbye.”
“Wait a minute,” Mrs. Hope said. She ran over, picked up Mrs. Garden’s letter from the desk, and brought it to her. “You don’t want to forget this,” she said. “Keep it near you, to read when things get dark. Goodbye, my dear.” She stood courteously by the door until Mrs. Garden closed it behind her.
Outside the door, Mrs. Garden waited a minute, fumbling in her pocketbook for her gloves. She heard Mrs. Hope cross the room, humming softly. Then there was the movement of a chair across the floor. Straightening the room, Mrs. Garden thought, pulling on a glove absentmindedly. She heard the click of the cedar beads brushing against something; probably the desk. There was silence for a minute; then Mrs. Garden heard the faint scratching of Mrs. Hope’s pen. With only one glove on and her pocketbook flying wildly behind her, Mrs. Garden turned and ran down the stairs and out into the warm noon sun.
WHISTLER’S GRANDMOTHER
The New Yorker, May 5, 1945
THE LITTLE OLD LADY on the train obviously wanted to talk. She had got on at Albany and she was sitting in the seat next to the aisle. She looked rather charming, in a neat black coat and an old lady’s hat, and she watched the woman next to her, who was reading a mystery, smiled at the children who constantly hurried up and down the aisle of the crowded car, and looked affectionately at the two sailors in the seat across the aisle.
At last she turned to the woman beside her and said, “I’m sorry to interrupt you, but how soon do we get to New York?”
The younger woman smiled politely. “At six o’clock, I think.”
“Thank you,” the old lady said. “I can hardly wait. I haven’t been to New York in nearly fifteen years.”
“It must be exciting.”
“I’m going to see my grandson,” the old lady said. “He’s home on leave.”
The younger woman hesitated, then closed her book and leaned back. “Really?” she said. “Where has he been?”
The old lady waved her hand vaguely. “In the Pacific.”
“How wonderful,” the younger woman said. “You’ll certainly be glad to see him.”
“I’m all the family he has left.”
“I guess he’ll be glad to see you, too,” the younger woman said.
“Let me show you his picture.” The old lady opened her pocketbook and took out a folding cardboard picture frame, with spaces for two pictures facing one another. One side had the picture of a soldier standing in front of a barracks; he looked very young. On the other side was the same soldier in front of the same barracks, but he had his arm around a pretty girl in a flowered dress. “He’s very handsome,” the younger woman said. “Is this his wife?”
The man in the seat in front of them, who looked as if he might be a prosperous businessman, was half listening. He had on a light gray suit. The paper he had been reading sagged in his hands. The old lady leaned forward and touched his shoulder. The man turned around. “Let me show you a picture of my grandson,” she said. “He’s coming home on furlough.”
The man took the picture and nodded solemnly. “Fine-looking young man.”
“It’s the first time he’s been near home in two years,” the old lady said. “He couldn’t come upstate to me, so I’m going to New York to him.”
“I’ve got two sons in the army,” the man said. “Sure glad to see those rascals when they come home.”
“Are they in the Pacific?” the old lady asked.
“In Mississippi. Both together, so far. They enlisted together.”
“How proud you must have been,” she said.
The old lady turned to the two sailors across the aisle. “I haven’t been to New York in fifteen years,” she said, leaning forward and raising her voice. “And now I’m going to meet my grandson. He’s on a furlough.”
When she held out the picture the two sailors rose and came across the aisle to look at it. “Are you on your way home?” the old lady asked them.
“No, ma’am,” one of the sailors said, “we’re on our way back.”
“Pretty lively time the last few days?” the man in the gray suit asked.
The sailors laughed, and the old lady said quickly, “I hope my grandson is cheerful like you boys. It’s been pretty hard for him.”
There was a silence, and then the man said reverently, “Guess they’ve all had a tough time, those boys.”
“This your grandson’s wife?” one of the sailors asked, passing the picture
back to the old lady. “Mighty pretty girl.”
“Depend on a sailor to notice a thing like that,” the man said, and he and the sailors laughed again.
“That’s his wife, all right,” the old lady said with a trace of bitterness in her voice.
“She looks like a very nice girl” the younger woman said.
“Very nice girl,” the old lady repeated scornfully. She leaned over and tapped the younger woman’s arm. “The way that girl’s been acting!” Her voice trembled slightly. “She hasn’t been fair to my grandson when he was fighting overseas.”
“That’s not very nice of her,” one of the sailors said.
“Coming up to visit me,” the old lady said, “with her fur coat and her indecent shoes. Talking all the time about how dead it was up where I live.”
“Where does she live?” the man in the gray suit asked.
“She lives in New York. My grandson, now, he has to stay in New York when he comes back.”
“Maybe you’re mistaken about her,” the younger woman said. “It’s so easy to make a mistake about people.”
“True is true,” the old lady said. “My grandson’s wife, she stayed with me awhile upstate. She used to get letters from men.”
The younger woman started to say something and then stopped, and the man said, “How do you know?”
“Don’t you think I can tell a man’s handwriting when I see it?” the old lady asked. “I know when a woman like that, with her clothes and the way she talked, when she gets letters every day they’re from men. It’s time my grandson heard.”
“You mean you’re going to tell him?” the man said. The sailors looked at the old lady, and the younger woman stared at her book.
“You wouldn’t want to do a thing like that,” one of the sailors said.
The old lady nodded emphatically. “All the way to New York,” she said, “to see she gets what’s coming to her.”
“Maybe you’re being too hard on her,” the man said. “Maybe she can explain everything.”
“True is true,” the old lady repeated. “I don’t have to listen to anything she has to say.”
“Is your grandson’s wife meeting you at the train?” the younger woman asked.
“She didn’t even ask me down to see my grandson,” the old lady replied. “She doesn’t know I’m coming, anyway.”
“Listen,” the younger woman said, “why don’t you sit down with her and have a long talk about the whole thing? Maybe you could clear it all up without saying anything to your grandson.”
“I’m not making a long trip like this to listen to her stories,” the old woman said.
“You ought to give that girl a chance to speak up for herself,” the man said.
“It’s not that we don’t think you’re doing right,” one of the sailors said. “It’s just that it seems sort of hard on everybody, him coming home after so long.”
“I’ll thank none of you to interfere,” the old lady said. “I can take care of my own affairs.”
After a minute the sailors slipped quietly back to their seat and the man returned to his paper. The younger woman said softly to the old lady, “You know, you’re not being very charitable.”
“I asked her to stay on and live with me in my own house,” the old lady said, “and she told me no, right to my face.”
The younger woman waited for a minute and then went back to her book.
When the train plunged into the tunnel to Grand Central, the old lady gathered her packages together, ready to get off. The younger woman stepped out into the aisle to put on her coat and found herself standing between the sailors and the man in the gray suit. When the old lady rose, she dropped one of her bundles and the man picked it up and handed it to her. She took it carefully and slipped her hand through the string around it. “It’s homemade doughnuts,” she said, smiling at them amiably, “for my grandson.”
“I hope you have a pleasant visit,” the younger woman said when the train came to a stop.
“Thank you,” the old lady said. “Will you excuse me, please?”
As the younger woman stepped back, she realized that for a moment she and the sailors and the man had been standing in front of the old lady, as though trying to block her way.
She followed the old lady out of the car, and had a brief picture of the sweet, grandmotherly old face as it turned to look at the people on the platform. Then the fragile black figure disappeared into the crowd.
FAMILY MAGICIAN
Woman’s Home Companion, September 1949
NATURALLY I REMEMBER THE summer Mallie was with us. That was the time I got to be captain of the Crocodile team and we beat the Nine-Man Wonders from Acacia Street. It was only three summers ago and we had moved to town the first of that year, so we were still pretty new. Mother was working herself nearly crazy trying to make the house and everything go smoothly for us kids. While Dad was alive she’d had a maid, but doing her own housework again was too much for her, I guess. And Dottie didn’t help much. She’d left forty or fifty boyfriends back in the town we moved away from, and when she wasn’t writing them letters she was upstairs bawling over their pictures, and worrying Mother about how they didn’t write. And I hadn’t got my pitching arm limbered up and the fellows around weren’t sure they’d even let me on the team. So there we were.
Anyway, one Saturday morning about the middle of May—it was a month or so before summer vacation started, too early for swimming and the fishing not much good—I came in from the backyard and there was a little old woman sitting in the kitchen. She was round and she had a pink face and she smiled up at me when I came in.
I said, “Hi,” just to be polite.
There was a row of what looked like cherry pies on the table, something smelled good on the stove, and the table was set, so I sort of smiled back at her and said, “When’s lunch?”
I found out later that the smile I thought she had on just for me was permanent—she never stopped smiling, far as I knew. She said, “Sit right down, son. You’re Jerry, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said. I sat down in my place and she got up and took my plate and brought it back from the stove filled with a kind of stew that tasted fine.
“This is good,” I said. “Is that pie?”
“Cherry pie,” she said. “How many can you eat?”
“Two,” I said. Just then Mother and Dottie came into the kitchen. Mother looked even more worried than usual and Dottie looked as though she had been crying again.
“What’s the matter?” I asked Dottie, still being polite. “No letter from Dickie again today?”
“How can you?” Dottie said. All the time in those days when she talked to me she would raise her eyes and sigh, as though I were getting to be too much for her to bear.
Mother looked at me and at the strange little woman and said, “Dorothy, sit down and eat your lunch.”
“It’s pretty good,” I said. When the little woman brought Mother’s plate she said, “Now, Mrs. Livingston, I got everything for today figured out. You run along downtown this afternoon and go to a movie, maybe, or do some shopping. I do like to see a boy eat,” and she pulled my hair when she went around to get Dottie’s plate.
“I can’t eat a thing, thank you very much,” Dottie said. She sighed and looked out the window. “I’m really not hungry at all, thank you very much.”
“Nonsense,” the little woman said, which is just what I was thinking. She filled Dottie’s plate and after a minute, when no one seemed to be looking, Dottie took a tiny taste. Pretty soon she was eating as well as I was.
“How about some pie, pal?” I said to the little woman, and Mother said, “Really, Jerry!” like she always does, but the little woman said, “You call me Mallie, son, and keep a civil tongue in your head, you hear?” and she laughed and I laughed and the pie was swell.
“Reason I want you to run along early this afternoon,” Mallie said to Mother, “Jerry here has a practice game on.”
�
��Baseball team,” I explained.
“And Missy here,” Mallie said, waving at Dottie, “she’s going to have company.”
“Me?” Dottie said. She looked up with a forkful of stew halfway to her mouth. “Really, I can’t imagine…”
Mallie winked at me. “You think I give away secrets?” she said. “If I told you who he is, you wouldn’t be surprised.”
“He?” Dottie said. She put her fork down.
“He?” I said in a squeaky voice. “You don’t want to see any boys, Dottie. You run along to the movies and Mallie can send him home again when he comes.”
Dottie started to fold her napkin but Mallie said, “You have plenty of time, Missy. He can’t get here before three. You run upstairs and get your blue linen dress and I’ll iron it for you. And you get along,” she said to me, and gave me a swift spank as I reached over to pick up my mitt. She was pretty fresh, all this spanking and hair pulling and stuff, but I figured that was mighty good pie and I gave her a poke in the ribs as I went by and all the way out of the yard I could hear her laughing and Mother saying, “Jerry, really!”
Anyway, I got home about five. A couple of the fellows on the team were walking along with me and when we got to my house Mallie stuck her head out of the kitchen window and called us. She told us to be ready to catch, and started throwing fresh hot doughnuts out of the window. I made a neat high catch on the first one, and while we sat on the fence eating, they said they thought I ought to be on the team, a substitute at first, of course, but on the team anyway.
After a while I went inside. Mother had just come home and Dottie was following her upstairs saying, “And it’s the biggest dance of the year and I can’t wear that old white…”
“Listen to her,” I told Mallie.
“You keep your mouth still,” she said to me. “All I want you to do is run right out in the yard and catch me a ladybug.”
Just an Ordinary Day: Stories Page 27