Cheaper by the Dozen (15 page)

"All right, you red lobsters, avast there," he bellowed. "Throw your captain a line and help haul me aboard. Or, shiver my timbers, I'll take a belaying pin to the swab who lowered the boom on me."

It was an off year that didn't bring a new Gilbreth baby. Both Dad and Mother wanted a large family. And if it was Dad who set the actual target of an even dozen, Mother as readily agreed.

Dad mentioned the dozen figure for the first time on their wedding day. They had just boarded a train at Oakland, California, after the ceremony, and Mother was trying to appear blase, as if she had been married for years. She might have gotten away with it, too, if Dad had not stage whispered when she took off her hat prior to sitting down:

"Good Lord, woman, why didn't you tell me your hair was red?"

The heads of leering, winking passengers craned around. Mother slid into the seat and wiggled into a corner, where she tried to hide behind a magazine. Dad sat down next to her. He didn't say anything more until the train got underway and they could talk without being heard throughout the car.

"I shouldn't have done that," he whispered. "It's just—I'm so proud of you I want everyone to look at you, and to know you're my wife."

"That's all right, dear. I'm glad you're proud of me."

"We're going to have a wonderful life, Lillie. A wonderful life and a wonderful family. A great big family."

"We'll have children all over the house," Mother smiled. "From the basement to the attic."

"From the floorboards to the chandelier."

"When we go for our Sunday walk we'll look like Mr. and Mrs. Pied Piper."

"Mr. Piper, shake hands with Mrs. Piper. Mrs. Piper, meet Mr. Piper."

Mother put the magazine on the seat between her and Dad, and they held hands beneath it.

"How many would you say we should have, just as an estimate?" Mother asked.

"Just as an estimate, many."

"Lots and lots."

"We'll sell out for an even dozen," said Dad. "No less. What do you say to that?"

"I say," said Mother, "a dozen would be just right. No less."

"That's the minimum."

"Boys or girls?"

"Well, boys would be fine," Dad whispered. "A dozen boys would be just right. But... well, girls would be all right, too. Sure. I guess."

"I'd like to have half boys and half girls. Do you think it would be all right to have half girls?"

"If that's what you want," Dad said, "we'll plan it that way. Excuse me a minute while I make a note of it." He took out his memorandum book and solemnly wrote: "Don't forget to have six boys and six girls."

They had a dozen children, six boys and six girls, in seventeen years. Somewhat to Dad's disappointment, there were no twins or other multiple births. There was no doubt in his mind that the most efficient way to rear a large family would be to have one huge litter and get the whole business over with at one time.

It was a year or so after the wedding, when Mother was expecting her first baby, that Dad confided to her his secret conviction that all of their children would be girls.

"Would it make much difference to you?" Mother asked him.

"Would it make much difference?" Dad asked in amazement. "To have a dozen girls and not a single boy?" And then, realizing that he might upset Mother, he added quickly: "No, of course not. Anything you decide to have will be just fine with me."

Dad's conviction that he would have no boys was based on a hunch that the Gilbreth Name, of which he was terribly proud, would cease to exist with him; that he was the last of the Gilbreths. Dad was the only surviving male of the entire branch of his family. There were two or three other Gilbreths in the country, but apparently they were no relation to Dad. The name Gilbreth, in the case of Dad's family, was a fairly recent corruption of Galbraith. A clerk of court, in a small town in Maine, had misspelled Galbraith on some legal document, and it had proved easier for Dad's grandfather to change his name to Gilbreth—which was how the clerk had spelled it—than to change the document.

So when Anne was born, in New York, Dad was not in the least bit disappointed, because he had known all along she would be a girl. It is doubtful if any father ever was more insane about an offspring. It was just as well that Anne was a girl. If she had been a boy, Dad might have toppled completely off the deep end, and run amok with a kris in his teeth.

Dad had long held theories about babies and, with the arrival of Anne, he was anxious to put them to a test. He believed that children, like little monkeys, were born with certain instincts of self-preservation, but that the instincts vanished because babies were kept cooped up in a crib. He was convinced that babies started learning things from the very minute they were born, and that it was wrong to keep them in a nursery. He always forbade baby talk in the presence of Anne or any of his subsequent offspring.

"The only reason a baby talks baby talk," he said, "is because that's all he's heard from grownups. Some children are almost full grown before they learn that the whole world doesn't speak baby talk."

He also thought that to feel secure and wanted in the family circle, a baby should be brought up at the side of its parents. He put Anne's bassinet on a desk in his and Mother's bedroom, and talked to her as if she were an adult, about concrete, and his new houseboat, and efficiency, and all the little sisters she was going to have.

The German nurse whom Dad had employed was scornful. "Why, she can't understand a thing you say," the nurse told Dad.

"How do you know?" Dad demanded. "And I wish you'd speak German, like I told you to do, when you talk in front of the baby. I want her to learn both languages."

"What does a two-week-old baby know about German?" said the nurse, shaking her head.

"Never mind that," Dad replied. "I hired you because you speak German, and I want you to speak it." He picked up Anne and held her on his shoulder. "Hang on now, Baby. Imagine you are a little monkey in a tree in the jungle. Hang on to save your life."

"Mind now," said the nurse. "She can't hang on to anything. She's only two weeks old. You'll drop her. Mind, now."

"I'm minding," Dad said irritably. "Of course she can't hang on, the way you and her mother coddle her and repress all her natural instincts. Show the nurse how you can hang on, Anne, Baby."

Anne couldn't. Instead, she spit up some milk on Dad's shoulder.

"Now, is that any way to behave?" he asked her. "I'm surprised at you. But that's all right, honey. I know it's not your fault. It's the way you've been all swaddled up around here. It's enough to turn anybody's stomach."

"You'd better give her to me for awhile," Mother said. "That's enough exercise for one day."

A week later, Dad talked Mother into letting him see whether new babies were born with a natural instinct to swim.

"When you throw little monkeys into a river, they just automatically swim. That's the way monkey mothers teach their young. I'll try out Anne in the bathtub. I won't let anything happen to her."

"Are you crazy or something?" the nurse shouted. "Mrs. Gilbreth, you're not going to let him drown that child."

"Keep quiet and maybe you'll learn something," Dad told her.

Anne liked the big bathtub just fine. But she made no effort to swim and Dad finally had to admit that the experiment was a failure.

"Now, if it had been a boy," he said darkly to the nurse, when Mother was out of hearing.

The desk on which Anne's bassinet rested was within reach of the bed and was piled high with notes,
Iron Age
magazines, and the galley proofs of a book Dad had just written on reinforced concrete. Mother utilized the "unavoidable delay" of her confinement to read the proofs. At night, when the light was out, Dad would reach over into the bassinet and stroke the baby's hand. And once Mother woke up in the middle of the night and saw him leaning over the bassinet and whispering distinctly:

"Is ou a ittle bitty baby? Is ou Daddy's ittle bitty girl?"

"What was that, dear?" said Mother, smiling into the sheet.

Dad cleared his throat. "Nothing. I was just telling

this noisy, ill-behaved, ugly little devil that she is more trouble than a barrel of monkeys."

"And just as much fun?"

"Every bit."

Dad and Mother moved to another New York apartment on Riverside Drive, where Mary and Ernestine were born. Then the family moved to Plainfield, New Jersey, where Martha put in an appearance. With four girls, Dad was reconciled to his fate of being the Last of the Gilbreths. He was not bitter; merely resigned. He kept repeating that a dozen girls would suit him just fine, and he made hearty jokes about "my harem." When visitors came to call, Dad would introduce Anne, Mary, and Ernestine. Then he'd get Martha out of her crib and bring her into the living room. "And this," he'd say, "is the latest model. Complete with all the improvements. And don't think that's all; we're expecting the 1911 model some time next month."

Although Mother's condition made the announcement unnecessary, he came out with it anyway. He never understood why this embarrassed Mother.

"I just don't see why you mind," he'd tell her later. "It's something to be proud of."

"Well, of course it is. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, but it seems to me a mistake to proclaim it from the housetops, or confide it to comparative strangers, until the baby arrives."

Still, Mother knew very well that Dad had to talk about his children, the children who had already arrived and those who were expected.

In spite of Mother's protests, Dad decided that the fifth child would be named for her. Mother didn't like the name Lillian, and had refused to pass the name along to any of the first four girls.

"No nonsense, now," Dad said. "We're running low on names, and this one is going to be named for you. Whether you like it or not, I want a little Lillian."

"But it could be a boy, you know."

"Boys!" Dad grunted. "Who wants boys?"

"Sooner or later there'll be a boy," Mother said. "Look what happened in my family." Mother's mother had six girls before she produced a boy.

"Sure," sighed Dad, "but your father wasn't the Last of the Gilbreths."

When Dr. Hedges came out of Mother s bedroom and announced that Mother and the fifth baby were doing nicely, Dad told him that "The Latest Model" was to be named Lillian.

"I think that's nice," Dr. Hedges said sympathetically. "Real nice. Of course, the other boys in his class may tease him about having a girl's name, but..."

"Yes, that's true," said Dad. "I hadn't thought of..." He grabbed the doctor by the shoulders and shook him. "Other boys?" he shouted. "Did you say other boys? Boys?"

"I hate to disappoint you, Mr. Gilbreth," grinned Dr. Hedges. "Especially since you've been telling everyone how much you wanted a fifth girl for your harem. But this one..."

Dad pushed him out of the way and rushed into the bedroom, where his first son was sleeping in a by now battered bassinet, on a desk once again covered with galley proofs. Dad and Mother timed their books to coincide with Mother's annual intervals of unavoidable delay.

"Chip off the old block," Dad cooed into the bassinet. "Every inch a Gilbreth. Oh, Lillie, how did you ever manage to do it?"

"Do you think he's all right?" Mother whispered.

"He's one I think we'd better keep," said Dad. "Do you know something? I didn't come right out and say so before, because I didn't want to upset you, and I knew you were doing the best you could. But I really wanted a boy all the time. I was just trying to make you feel better when I said I wanted a fifth girl."

Mother managed to keep a straight face. "Mercy, Maud, you certainly had everybody fooled," she said. "I thought you'd be simply furious if little 'Lillian' turned out to be a boy.You seemed so set on naming this one for me. Are you sure you're not disappointed?"

"Gee whiz," was all Dad could manage.

"What should we name him?"

Dad wasn't listening. He was still leaning over the bassinet, cooing. There was little doubt in Mother's mind, anyway, about what the baby would be named, and Dad clinched the matter by the next remark which he addressed to the baby.

"I've got to leave you now for a few minutes, Mr. Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Junior," he said, rolling out the name and savoring its sound. "I've got to make a few telephone calls and send some wires. And I've got to get some toys suitable for a boy baby. All the toys we have around this house are girl baby toys. Behave yourself while I'm gone and take care of your mother. That's one of your jobs from now on." And over his shoulder to Mother, "I'll be back in a few minutes, Lillie."

"Farewell, Next to Last of the Gilbreths," Mother whispered. But Dad still wasn't listening. As he closed the door carefully, Mother heard him bellowing:

"Anne, Mary, Ernestine, Martha. Did you hear the news? It's a boy. Frank Bunker Gilbreth, Junior. How do you like the sound of that? Every inch a Gilbreth. Chip off the old block. Hello, Central? Central? Long Distance, please. It's a boy."