Bradbury, Ray - SSC 07 (25 page)

 
          
 
The morning the great fire started, nobody in
the house could put it out. It was Mother's niece, Marianne, living with us
while her parents were in Europe, who was all aflame. So nobody could smash the
little window in the red box at the comer and pull the trigger to bring the
gushing hoses and the hatted firemen. Blazing like so much ignited
cellophane,
Marianne came downstairs, plumped herself with a
loud cry or moan at the breakfast table, and refused to eat enough to fill a
tooth cavity.

 
          
 
Mother and Father moved away, the warmth in
the room being excessive.

 
          
 
"Good morning, Marianne."

 
          
 
"What?" Marianne looked beyond
people and spoke vaguely. "Oh, good morning."

 
          
 
"Did you sleep well last night,
Marianne?"

 
          
 
But they knew she hadn't slept. Mother gave
Marianne a glass of water to drink, and everyone wondered if it would evaporate
in her hand. Grandma, from her table chair, surveyed Marianne's fevered eyes.
"You're sick, but it's no microbe," she said. "They couldn't
find it under a microscope."

 
          
 
"What?" said Marianne.

           
 
"Love is godmother to stupidity,"
said Father detachedly.

 
          
 
"She'll be all right," Mother said
to Father. "Girls only seem stupid because when they're in love they can't
hear."

 
          
 
"It affects the semicircular
canals," said Father. "Making many girls fall right into a fellow's
arms. I know. I was almost crushed to death once by a falling woman, and let me
tell you—"

 
          
 
"Hush." Mother frowned, looking at
Marianne.

 
          
 
"She can't hear what we're saying; she's
cataleptic right now."

 
          
 
*'He's coming to pick her up this
morning," whispered Mother to Father, as if Marianne wasn't even in the
room. "They're going riding in his jalopy."

 
          
 
Father patted his mouth with a napkin.
"Was our daughter like this. Mama?" he wanted to know. "She's
been married and gone so long, I've forgotten. I don't recall she was so
foolish. One would never know a girl had an ounce of sense at a time like this.
That's what fools a man. He says. Oh, what a lovely brainless girl, she loves
me, I think I'U marry her. He marries her and wakes up one morning and all the
dreaminess is gone out of her and her intellect has returned, unpacked, and is
hanging up undies all about the house. The man begins running into ropes and
lines. He finds himself on a little desert isle, a little living room alone in
the midst of a universe, with a honeycomb that has turned into a bear trap,
with a butterfly metamorphosed into a wasp. He then immediately takes up a
hobby: stamp collecting, lodge meetings, or—"

 
          
 
"How you do run on," cried Mother.
"Marianne, tell us about this young man. What was his name again? Was it
Isak Van Pelt?"

 
          
 
"What? Oh—Isak, yes." Marianne had
been roving about her bed all night, sometimes flipping poetry books and
reading incredible lines, sometimes lying flat on her back, sometimes on her
tummy looking out at dreaming moonlit country. The smell of jasmine had touched
the room all night and the excessive warmth of early spring (the thermometer
read fifty-five degrees) had kept her awake. She looked like a dying moth, if
anyone had peeked through the keyhole.

 
          
 
This morning she had clapped her hands over
her head in the mirror and come to breakfast, remembering just in time to put
on a dress.

 
          
 
Grandma laughed quietly all during breakfast.
Finally she said, "You must eat, child, you must" So Marianne played
with her toast and got half a piece down. Just then there was a loud honk
outside. That was Isak! In his jalopy!

 
          
 
"Whoop!" cried Marianne, and ran
upstairs quickly.

 
          
 
The young Isak Van Pelt was brought in and
introduced around.

 
          
 
When Marianne was finally gone, Father sat
down, wiping his forehead. "I don't know. This is too much."

 
          
 
"You were the one who suggested she start
going out," said Mother.

 
          
 
"And I'm sorry I suggested it," he
said. "But she's been visiting us for six months now, and six more months
to go. I thought if she met some nice young man—"

 
          
 
"And they were married," husked
Grandma darkly, "why, Marianne might move out almost immediately—is that
it?"

 
          
 
"Well," said Father.

 
          
 
"Well," said Grandma.

 
          
 
"But now it's worse than before,"
said Father. "She floats around singing with her eyes shut, playing those infernal
love records and talking to herself. A man can stand so much. She's getting so
she laughs all the time, too. Do eighteen-year-old girls often wind up in the
booby hatch?"

 
          
 
"He seems a nice young man," said
Mother.

 
          
 
"Yes, we can always pray for that,"
said Father, taking out a little shot glass. "Here's to an early
marriage."

 
          
 
The second morning Marianne was out of the
house like a fireball when first she heard the jalopy horn. There was no time
for the young man even to come to the door. Only Grandma saw them roar off
together, from the parlor window.

 
          
 
"She almost knocked me down." Father
brushed his mustache. "What's that? Brained eggs? Well."

 
          
 
In the afternoon, Marianne, home again,
drifted about the living room to the phonograph records. The needle hiss filled
the house. She played "That Old Black Magic" twenty-one times, going
"la la la" as she swam with her eyes closed in the room.

 
          
 
"I'm afraid to go in my own parlor,"
said Father. "I retired from business to smoke cigars and enjoy living,
not to have a limp relative humming about under the parlor chandelier."

 
          
 
"Hush," said Mother.

 
          
 
"This is a crisis," announced
Father, "in my life. After all, she's just visiting."

 
          
 
"You know how visiting girls are. Away
from home they think they're in Paris, France. She'll be gone in October. It's
not so dreadful."

 
          
 
"Let's see," figured Father slowly.
"I'll have been buried just about one hundred and thirty days out at Green
Lawn Cemetery by then." He got up and threw his paper down into a little
white tent on the floor. "By George, Mother, I'm talking to her right
now!”

 
          
 
He went and stood in the parlor door, peering
through it at the waltzing Marianne. "La," she sang to the music.

 
          
 
Clearing his throat, he stepped through.

 
          
 
"Marianne," he said.

 
          
 
" 'That old black magic . . .'" sang
Marianne. "Yes?"

 
          
 
He watched her hands swinging in the air. She
gave him a sudden fiery looked as she danced by.

 
          
 
"I want to talk to you." He
straightened his tie.

 
          
 
"Dah dum dee dum dum dee dum dee dum dum,"
she sang.

 
          
 
"Did you hear me?" he demanded.

 
          
 
"He's so nice," she said.

 
          
 
"Evidently."

 
          
 
"Do you know, he bows and opens doors
like a doorman and plays a trumpet like Harry James and brought me daisies this
morning?"

 
          
 
"I wouldn't doubt."

 
          
 
"His eyes are blue." She looked at
the ceiling.

 
          
 
He could find nothing at all on the ceiling to
look at.

 
          
 
She kept looking, as she danced, at the
ceiling as he came over and stood near her, looking up, but there wasn't a rain
spot or a settling crack there, and he sighed, "Marianne."

 
          
 
"And we ate lobster at that river
cafe."

 
          
 
"Lobster. I know, but we don't want you
breaking down, getting weak. One day, tomorrow, you must stay home and help
your aunt Math make her doilies—"

 
          
 
"Yes, sir." She dreamed around the
room with her wings out.

 
          
 
"Did you hear me?" he demanded.

 
          
 
"Yes," she whispered.
"Yes." Her eyes shut. "Oh yes, yes." Her skirts whished
around. "Uncle," she said, her head back, lolling.

 
          
 
"You'll help your aunt with her doilies?"
he cried.

 
          
 
"—with her doilies," she murmured.

 
          
 
"There!" He sat down in the kitchen,
plucking up the paper. "I guess I told her!"

 
          
 
But next morning he was on the edge of his bed
when he heard the hot-rod's thunderous muffler and heard Marianne fall
downstairs, linger two seconds in the dining room for breakfast, hesitate by
the bathroom long enough to consider whether she would be sick, and then the
slam of the front door, the sound of the jalopy banging down the street, two
people singing off key in it.

 
          
 
Father put his head in his hands.
"Doilies," he said.

 
          
 
"What?" said Mother.

 
          
 
"Dooley's," said Father. "I'm
going down to Dooley's for a morning visit."

 
          
 
"But Dooley's isn't open until ten."

 
          
 
"I'll wait," decided Father, eyes
shut.

 
          
 
That night and seven other wild nights the
porch swing sang a little creaking song, back and forth, back and forth.
Father, hiding in the living room, could be seen in fierce relief whenever he
drafted his ten-cent cigar and the cherry light illumined his immensely tragic
face. The porch swing creaked. He waited for another creak. He heard little
butterfly-soft sounds from outside, little palpitations of laughter and sweet
nothings in small ears. "My porch," said Father. "My
swing," he whispered to his cigar, looking at it. "My house." He
listened for another creak. "My God," he said.

 
          
 
He went to the tool shed and appeared on the
dark porch with a shiny oil can. "No, don't get up. Don't bother. There,
and there." He oiled the swing joints. It was dark. He couldn't see
Marianne; he could smell her. The perfume almost knocked him off into the
rosebush. He couldn't see her gentleman friend, either. "Good night,"
he said. He went in and sat down and there was no more creaking. Now all he
could hear was something that sounded like the mothlike flutter of Marianne's
heart.

 
          
 
"He must be very nice," said Mother
in the kitchen door, wiping a dinner dish.

 
          
 
"That's what I'm hoping," whispered
Father. "That's why I let them have the porch every night!"