“You’ll never learn to pitch horseshoes,” Laurie said. “Not as long as you throw with both hands, you won’t. So why—”
“Why don’t you ask Mrs. Oliver?” I suggested magnanimously. “Or Mrs. Roberts? Or Mrs. Stuart? I’m sure they’d be glad to do it. But I’m too busy.”
“They’re all too busy, too,” Laurie said. “If we could get anyone else, we wouldn’t ask you, for heaven’s sake.”
“Or Mrs. Williams,” I said with enthusiasm. “I’m sure Mrs. Williams would love to be your Den Mother.”
“You think we didn’t ask?” Laurie said. He looked at me wearily. “She told us she couldn’t. You’re the only one left,” he said.
“But I’m too busy” I insisted.
“At what?”
And so I became official Den Mother of Den Four. Since I have no illusions about my own abilities at climbing a greased pole or laying a trail over ten miles of rough country or tying a cow-hitch, I found myself forced to consider the few talents I do possess. My bridge game, although fairly good, would not do for Cub Scouts, I felt, although I also feel—as I believe every bridge player has at one time or another—that the young might really be taught to play a decent game now, instead of waiting to learn until they sit down at the table with me.
At any rate, bridge would not do, and neither would the composing of limericks, another talent upon which I pride myself and which I gave up reluctantly as Den Four’s project for the fall season; the art form is really too difficult for the minds of young boys, for one thing.
The whole tone of my Den Mothership was finally set by a lucky inspiration, and once the disciplinary setup was arranged, our meetings went smoothly: I supplied two bottles of soda and four doughnuts for each Cub at each meeting, we had a brief parliamentary discussion, and then everybody went quietly about his business. The boys tied their knots and painted the attic walls—of their own volition and with great energy—while I peeled potatoes for dinner and sang old camp songs to myself. And every Cub came to every meeting every week.
I confess to some nervousness at our first meeting. I gathered up my six Den Fours at the school on Wednesday afternoon. I knew most of them slightly, and apparently they all knew me, since conversation in the car was devoted exclusively to speculation on what kind of Den Mother Laurie’s old lady was going to be. I had anticipated some difficulty with my son’s feeling arrogant and superior because his mother was the Den Mother and the meetings were to be in his house; but it turned out that my fears were as nothing compared to his.
When we got out of the car, he took me aside and said nervously, “Look, don’t try anything you can’t finish.”
“Nonsense,” I told him. “We’re all going to have a lovely time.”
“Listen,” he asked, “did you remember to get food?”
At ten minutes past three, when all the doughnuts had been consumed and all the empty soda bottles had been put back neatly in the case, my six Cub Scouts folded their hands, sat dutifully in a row on the playroom floor, and turned expectant, and in one case cynical, looks upon me. “Well?” said my son.
“Boys,” I said brightly, “I think we ought to elect officers.” There was a long silence. “Like a Den president,” I continued weakly, “and a treasurer.” I looked around at the silent faces. “To collect dues, you know,” I said, remembering unhappily that Election of Officers, on my rough schedule, was supposed to take us until four o’clock and was supposed, also, to be an enthusiastic, although gentlemanly, sporting event, approximating movies I had seen of the British House of Commons. “Officers,” I finished, smiling at the blank faces.
“She means like a president and stuff,” Laurie said with desperate urgency.
“No, I don’t,” I said, suddenly getting my inspiration. “I mean, for instance, an Official Whiner. So that all the whining about everything”—I looked at my son—“can be done by one person, and the rest of you won’t have to bother.”
“Hey,” said one of the boys, interested, “that would do for Harry, here, I bet.” He shoved the boy next to him violently, and the other Cubs said, “Cut it out,” and, “Shuddup,” and, “Will ya?”
“I nominate George,” said the Cub who had been pushed. “George for Official Whiner.”
“Sure,” said someone I took to be George. He sounded flattered. “And I betcha Billy could be the Giggler and laugh for all of us.”
“And whaddya say we make Artie Old Know-It-All?”
I caught a respectful glance from my son and sat back, grinning smugly. Elections went on until I had to herd the boys into the car to take them home. We elected Laurie the Big Talker, and Artie got to be the General Expert Who Knows the Best Way to Do Everything, and Michael, who is able to crow like a rooster, got the rooster-crowing job, but was confined by bylaws to one crow per meeting. (I did not know at the time, although I do now, why the other Cubs insisted on putting that in about only one crow per meeting; they were, of course, more farsighted than I was.) By unanimous consent, Peter was elected Guy Who Always Says He Isn’t Coming to Cub Scouts but Then Always Comes Anyway, and I got an honorary post—Utility Outfielder. Toby, our dog, was elected President, and Laurie’s year-old brother, Barry, got to be Sergeant at Arms, with a salary of one doughnut a meeting.
I discovered, too, that something I believed peculiar to Laurie was actually true of all ten-year-old boys; they feel an extreme sentimentality toward babies, kittens, and little girls under four. Jannie, our seven-year-old daughter, was just old enough to be regarded as an intruder. She wanted to participate as a full member and was told, “G’way. We don’t want no girls.” But Barry and Sally—who is only just four—were regarded instantly as Den pets, and Sally was voted in as Bat Girl and Mascot. When I insisted that it wasn’t fair to leave out Jannie, she was elected Waitress, to hand out the soda at meetings, with one dissenting vote—her older brother’s.
My contribution to the world of discipline came during the voting for Rooster-Crower, when silence became imperative. I had thought to use the method of insuring silence that has always been most practical with my own four children when general roughhouse prevails; I usually yell Quiet! at the top of my lungs, and since I can yell louder than four children, of whom two are still pretty small, I frequently get quiet. If my own voice cannot prevail, I can always get their father to come and yell with me. I do not suppose that this is the ideal method of silencing children who are knocking each other around and stamping and pulling and shoving and screaming and howling; but it is the only way I have ever found that works, and so I assumed that it would work with six Cub Scouts.
The first time I yelled Quiet! at my Cub Scouts, however, the effect was so shocking, they were immediately silenced. The second time I yelled Quiet! nobody heard me. When I had yelled Quiet! about six times and gotten no results, I reached without conscious intention (I sincerely maintain) into my box of groceries, which sat on the floor behind me, and in which I vaguely hoped I might uncover a forgotten box of doughnuts or a bunch of bananas or some such, and in which I found, instead, an egg.
I took little thought, but good aim. Assuming that my own son was the most reasonable target, since I had to wash his shirts myself, I fired. Silence was instant and profound. Five potential roosters, halted in mid-crow, regarded Laurie dripping eggshell and yolk, and when I remarked that that was better, and set the box of eggs meaningfully on the floor next to me, our meeting resumed in a manner almost subdued.
Later that year, when eggs went way up in price, I fell back on marshmallows as ammunition; these had the additional advantage of being edible (edible, that is, by Cub Scouts), and although they did not carry the impact of a raw egg, I found that by then all I had to do to bring a dead silence was to raise my right arm.
Except for the improvement in my throwing arm, a new technique of discipline, and our painted attic walls, we had, as I say, nothing to show for our work at the annual meeting. We had been laboriously working out a haphazard and hilarious sk
it to present, although at the last minute Michael got chicken pox and Jannie had to fill in as the Tree. Suddenly, as I sat there, eyes shut and teeth clenched in the despairing hope that the Lion would not forget his lines and the Cake would not stumble again over the Crocodile’s tail, a staggering and frightening thought came to me. Someday—and not very long off, either—Laurie will be a Boy Scout, Jannie will be a Girl Scout, Sally will be a Brownie, and Barry will be a Cub Scout. All at once. I hope the price of eggs comes down again before then.
THE ORDER OF CHARLOTTE’S GOING
Charm, July 1954
IALWAYS USED TO love June, and the roses, and the heat; I used to sit at the breakfast table and feel the warm, rich air coming in from the garden, and linger over my coffee just because it seemed somehow to make the days longer, and everything, all day, was easier when the weather was warm. I can remember that Charlotte felt the same way; sometimes at the breakfast table we would catch each other smiling. “I wish I could sleep all winter,” I said once, “and only wake up for June.”
“You’re wishing your life away,” Charlotte said.
That must have been early in the summer of Charlotte’s death; I cannot remember a time during her illness when that remark was not at the back of my mind. Wishing my life away, I might think, the roses heavy in the window beside me, and Charlotte just faintly more pale than the morning before; “You look well this morning,” I would say.
Charlotte would look over at me, and smile, and say, “Thanks so much, dear. And please either stop telling me or make it sound true.” Then we would both laugh, because neither of us took the notion of Charlotte’s dying very seriously; no one, I think we both felt, could just die, not in June with the roses out. We tried making a joke of it—only at first, of course—“Coffee?” I would say, giving the coffeepot a little shove in her direction, “It may be your last cup, you know.” Or she might remark, eyeing the pastries, “I feel that I have a right to the larger, since I shall so soon be deprived of earthly joys.” I believed then that if Charlotte ever did think she was dying, she rather enjoyed the idea—it was all but painless, at first, and more than anything else like a schoolgirl dream of Camille, you know; she felt reasonably well, sometimes better than others, but she knew she was dying only because Doctor West and Doctor Nathan said so, and it seemed so silly, after all, to let them decide.
Actually, she had all the pleasures of dying for that whole summer. Everyone knew about it, and they gave her the best of everything, and always found a chair for her at the garden parties, and someone was always sure to be there to fetch poor Charlotte a drink or to talk to poor Charlotte or to play up to poor Charlotte’s gallant attempts to tone down her part; she used to wink at me across the room and I might wander over and say amiably, “Well, Charlotte dear, dead yet?” and everyone would gasp and say “Shhh” and “Good Lord,” and Charlotte wouldn’t be able to keep from laughing, and of course that made everyone tell everyone else how courageous poor Charlotte was, and wasn’t it lucky she was taking it so well, when of course all the time she was just enjoying herself right up to the hilt, more than she ever did before she was dying.
Charlotte was, of course, several years older than I; she was my older cousin, and I was the one always left out when she and my sisters used to gather together at parties and whisper and giggle, but then, the way things turned out, Charlotte and I ended up together, after all. There was I, no money and no place to go, just out of college and a little bit frightened, and there was Charlotte, all the money in the family, and tired of paid companions and being alone, and we ran into each other one day in town, and had lunch together, and decided we’d try putting up with each other for a while, with the understanding, of course, that we could always quit if we couldn’t stand each other. Well, it was fourteen years now, and we’d fought our way through most of it, spending our winters quarreling in town and our summers quarreling out at the cottage, and both of us livelier and happier than we would have been any other way. Charlotte always wanted to die at the cottage, anyway, so we came out early that year, after she’d seen Nathan, in town, and he’d told her about her heart, and her blood pressure, and everyone had looked gravely at everyone else, and Nathan said to me, “Take very good care of her, Miss Baxter—she’s always taken good care of you.” Charlotte of course began to laugh when he said that, and that made poor old Nathan the first person to pat Charlotte on the shoulder and say she was taking it courageously. So we came out to the cottage early that summer, and I began wishing my life away, and then around the middle of June Charlotte got the first communication. We started right away calling them communications, right with that first one, because there wasn’t much else to call them without taking them too seriously.
The first one was in the morning mail, and addressed to Charlotte, of course. I used to be complacent about how all the mail I got meant something; Charlotte was the one who got all the bills and all the ads and all the begging letters, and anything I got was either a letter from someone or an invitation. Anyway, this first communication made Charlotte laugh. “Look at this thing,” she said, tossing it across the table to me, “someone’s gotten some wire crossed.”
It was an ordinary congratulatory card, and very ordinary indeed—vulgar, I would have called it, actually. It was full of painted pink roses and cupids and was sticky with sequins: “Best Wishes on Your Plighted Troth,” it read in pink letters, and there was a white satin bow.
“Golly,” I said, “you suppose it’s meant for Martha?”
“If Martha’s getting married, I want to know about it,” Charlotte said grimly, and she put her head back and yelled, “Martha!”
“Hon, cut it out,” I said. “You know you’re supposed to be an invalid. Let me do the yelling, if you won’t let me go and get her.”
“Martha?” Charlotte said over my shoulder. “You getting married?”
“Me?” Martha was a good solid country woman; she was the greatest glory of our summer life, and thinking about it, Martha—who had already tried it twice, anyway—would as soon think of getting married again as she would of putting tomatoes in a chowder. “You think I’m crazy?” Martha said.
“Look,” Charlotte said, holding out the card. “I’m not getting married, and neither is Anne.”
“Me neither,” Martha said. “So I guess that’s none of us.” She looked down at the card disdainfully, holding it far away so she could read it. “Look at that card,” she said, and handed it back delicately. “My,” she said, and made a face. “Could use it to trim a cake,” Martha said.
“I believe I’ll put it on the mantel,” Charlotte said.
“I’ll do it,” I said as Charlotte started to get up, and Martha winked at me. “Might as well let her,” Martha said to me, “neither of us can stop her doing anything.”
“She’s supposed to be sick,” I said. “I’m supposed to be taking care of her, Doctor Nathan said so.”
“Hah,” said Martha. “You feel like coconut cake for lunch? That card put it in my mind.”
“Sure,” I said. “Plenty of frosting.”
The card stayed there on the mantel for about a week, but I don’t think Charlotte kept on finding it as funny as she thought she would. In the first place, just about all the jokes you could think of to make to an unmarried lady of forty-eight about her getting congratulations on her engagement either were made in the first twenty-four hours or were too indelicate to make, anyway, and in the second place, Charlotte and I had gotten sort of used to being spinsters, and never gave it much thought, and even talked about it sometimes, between ourselves, but having the card up there on the mantel sort of brought it to mind, somehow, and even made people think we did wonder a little about ourselves. Anyway, Charlotte took the card down and I imagine she burned it, because it wasn’t there by the time the second one came.
“This isn’t funny,” Charlotte said, passing it across the breakfast table to me. “You think it’s funny?”
It was covere
d with sequins, like the first one, and cupids and roses, only this one had a white satin heart in the center, and it said “Blessings on Your Nuptials.” It was like the first one also in that it was not signed; this time we both looked at the envelope and wondered where it had come from. “Two can’t be an accident,” Charlotte said. “Someone’s doing it on purpose.”
“Some kind of a misguided practical joke,” I said.
“Trying to cheer me up in my last hours?” Charlotte said. “Not quite the way to do it, I think.”
“Mailed locally, too,” I said. “Put down that cigarette. You’ve had one,” I added. “You’re not allowed any.”
“It’s not worth it,” Charlotte said, “I’d even rather live.”
“You can’t, now,” I told her. “All arrangements have been made. Mrs. Austin’s planning a luncheon for after the funeral.”
“You suppose Mrs. Austin…?” Charlotte wondered, regarding the envelope.
“Why on earth? It’s some fool who got caught in a joke in bad taste and won’t ever admit it now.”
The third card was done in pink ribbons, and read “Love to the New Arrival.” It amused no one very much. We decided that the envelopes had been addressed left-handed, and got everyone we knew trying left-handed stabs at writing Charlotte’s name, although we were sure by then we’d never know who sent them, because anyone who thought they were funny would have come out with it by that time, and in any case it’s easy to make a mess of trying to write left-handed. The next card, which I thought was probably the least happily chosen, was bright yellow, with puppies looking dolefully at one another, and on the front it said, “Sorry for Your Aches and Pains,” and inside there was a verse about being sorry she was sick, and hoping she’d be real well soon and back at play with the other boys and girls. “I don’t like these,” Charlotte said, handing me this last one, “they are beginning to frighten me.”
Just an Ordinary Day: Stories Page 37