Cheaper by the Dozen (24 page)

From that day on, about the only contact Dad had with the sheiks was over the telephone.

"Some simpleton with pimples in his voice wants to speak to Ernestine," he grumbled to Mother when he answered the phone. "I'll swear, I'm going to have that instrument taken out of here. These tea hounds are running me crazy. I wish they'd sniff around someone else's daughters for awhile, and give us some peace."

Libby Holton, one of the girls in Anne's class, was from Mississippi and had only recently moved with her family to Montclair. She was pretty, mature for her age, and even the straight silhouette styles couldn't hide her figure. She was a heavy painter and wore the highest heels and the shortest skirts in the school. She looked like everything Dad said his daughters shouldn't look like.

Libby was charming and popular. She and Anne became good friends, and Anne finally had her over for lunch. Libby's place was next to Dad's, and she was loaded with perfume—you could smell it the minute she walked into the house. Knowing how Dad disliked makeup and perfume, we were afraid he was going to make Anne's friend change her place at the table or, worse still, order her to go upstairs and wash herself.

We might have saved ourselves the worry, because it soon became apparent that while Dad didn't like perfume on his own daughters, he didn't object to it on other people's daughters.

"My, that smells good," he told Libby after he had been introduced. "I'm glad you're going to sit right here next to me, where I can keep an eye and a nose on you."

"Why, I declare," said Libby. "Anne Gilbreth, you hussy you, why didn't you tell me you had such a gallant Daddy? And so handsome, too."

"Oh, boy," groaned Bill.

Libby turned to Bill and dropped him a slow, fluttering wink. "Ain't I the limit?" she laughed.

"Oh, boy," said Bill. But this time it was more of a yodel than a groan.

Both Anne and Libby worked hard on Dad all during lunch. He saw through them, but he enjoyed it. He imitated Libby's southern accent, called her Honey Chile and You-All, and outdid himself telling stories and jokes.

"I heard from some of the other girls in school about how cute you were," said Libby. "They said the nicest things about you. And they said you used to come to all the dances, too."

"That's right. And if I had known about the Mississippi invasion I would have started going to the dances all over again."

After dessert, we sat around the table wondering what came next. We knew, and so did Dad, that it was a build up for something. Just as Dad finally pushed back his chair, Anne cleared her throat.

"You know, Daddy, there's something I've been wanting to ask you for a long time."

"And now, having been flattered, fattened, and fussed over, the sucker is led forward for the shake-down," Dad grinned. "Well, speak up, girls. What is it?"

"Why don't you take this afternoon off and teach Libby and me how to drive the car? We're almost old enough to get licenses, and it would be a big convenience for the whole family if someone besides you knew how to drive."

"Is that all? You didn't need all the sweet-talk for that. I thought you were going to ask me to let you spend the weekend at Coney Island or something." He looked at his watch. "I'm going to have to put some more Neatsfoot oil on the clutch. I'll have the car out front in exactly twelve minutes."

Libby and Anne both threw their arms around his neck.

"I never thought he'd do it," Anne said.

"I told you he'd say yes," Libby grinned. "Mr. Gilbreth, you're a sweet old duck." She planted a kiss on his cheek, leaving two red, lipsticked smears.

The girls rushed out of the dining room to get ready, and Dad rolled his eyes.

"Well, Lillie," he said to Mother, "I guess my spring chicken days are over. When you start getting pecks on the cheek from your daughters' friends, you're on the decline."

"The first thing I know you'll be greasing your hair and wearing one of those yellow slickers," Mother admonished him with mock severity. "Better wash the lipstick off your face before you go out, sheik."

Dad grinned vacantly, and walked so that his pants cuffs swished like Oxford bags.

"I'm going out and take the fenders off Foolish Carriage," he said. "Four Wheels, No Brakes. The Tin You Love to Touch."

Frank, Bill, and Lillian, still in junior high school, resented the infiltration of the high-school Romeos. What they objected to principally was that the three oldest girls were being turned away from family activities. Anne, Ernestine, and Martha had less and less time for family games, for plays and skits. It was the inevitable prelude to growing up. It was just a few bars, if you please, Professor, of that sentimental little ditty entitled "Those Wedding Bells Are Breaking Up That Old Gang of Mine." Marriage was still in the distant future, but the stage was being set.

Anne already had had her first proposal. Joe Scales had asked her to marry him.They were sitting in a hammock on the side porch when he popped the question.The porch was separated by French doors from the parlor and by windows from the office. Frank, Bill, and Lillian, lying flat on the parlor floor and peeking through the doors, bore witness to the proposal and to Anne's none-too-original rejection.

"I like to think of you as a brother," she told Scales.

"A fine thing!" Frank whispered to Bill. "Imagine thinking of that wet smack in terms of us."

"You caught me," Scales told Anne. "I went for you, hook, line, and sinker. What are you going to do with me?"

Anne was touched by this show of slavish devotion. "What am I going to do with you?" she echoed dramatically.

"Throw him back," Dad roared from the other side of the office window. "He's too small to keep."

Frank, Bill, and Lill fought gamely against the invasion, but in vain. More effective, although unpremeditated, were the obstacles erected by the four little boys, Fred, Dan, Jack, and Bob, who kept running in and out of the rooms where the older girls were entertaining their callers.

"I'm living through what can only be described as a Hell on earth," Anne moaned to Mother. "It's impossible to entertain at home with that troop of four berserk little boys. Something drastic has got to be done about them."

"What's the matter with them?"

"They're in and out of the porch all evening. Up in my lap, up in my friend's lap, under the hammock, over the hammock, in and out, up and down, over and under, until I'm about to go daft."

"Well, what do you suggest, dear?"

"Tie them down."

At the end of one particular evening, Anne became almost hysterical.

"I'm fed up to the eyeballs with that button brigade," she sobbed. "They're driving me screaming, screeching mad. How can you expect any boy to get into a romantic mood when you have to button and unbutton all evening?"

"They're not supposed to get into romantic moods," Dad said. "That's just what we don't want around here."

Anne paid no attention to him. "It's 'Andy, unbutton me, I have to get undressed.' It's 'Andy, button me up, I'm cold.' It's 'Andy, it's three o'clock in the button factory' I tell you, Mother, it's just too much of a handicap to endure. You're going to have to do something about it, unless you want all your daughters to be old maids."

"You're right," Mother conceded. "I'll do my best to keep them upstairs the next time you have company. I wonder what four sets of leg irons would cost?"

The opposition of Frank, Bill, and Lill was less subtle.

"You want to speak to Martha?" Frank would say in an incredulous voice when one of her sheiks would telephone. "You're absolutely sure? You haven't got her mixed up with somebody else? You mean Martha Gilbreth, the one with all the freckles? Oh, mercy! Don't hang up, please. Are you still there? Thank goodness! Please don't hang up."

Then, holding the telephone so that the boy on the other end could still hear him, Frank would shout desperately:

"Martha, come quick. Imagine! It's a boy calling for you. Isn't that wonderful? Hurry up. He might hang up."

"Give me that phone, you little snake-in-the-grass," Martha would scream in a white rage. "When I get through I'll tear your eyes out, you unspeakable little brat you." And then, in a honeyed voice, into the mouthpiece. "Helloooo. Who? Well, good looking, where have you been all my life? You have? Well, I've been waiting too. Uh, huh."

One of Ernestine's admirers was shy and subdued, and never could bring himself to tell her what he thought of her. After he had been calling on her for almost a year, he finally mustered his courage and had a beautiful picture taken of himself. Then he inscribed across the bottom of the picture, in purple ink, a very special message.

The message said, "All My Fondest Thoughts Are of You, Dearest Ernestine."

He couldn't bring himself to give the picture to her personally, so he wrapped it up, insured it for one hundred dollars, and sent it through the mail.

Ern kept it hidden in a bureau drawer, but no hiding place in our house was any too safe, and the junior-high-school contingent finally discovered it, memorized it, put it to music, and learned a three-part harmony for it.

The next time the bashful boy came to call, Frank, Bill, and Lill, hidden in a closet under the front steps, started to sing:

"All my fondest thoughts,

"(My fondest thoughts)

"Are of you,

"(Yes, nobody else but you)

"My Dearest Ernestine,

"(I don't mean Anne; I don't mean Mart)

"But Dearest Ernestine."

The shrinking sheik turned a bright crimson and actually cringed against the hatrack, while Ernestine picked up one of Dad's walking sticks and started after the younger set, bent on premeditated, cold-blooded mayhem.

As a matter of routine, Frank and Bill would answer the front door when a sheik came to call and subject him to a preliminary going over, designed to make him feel ill at ease for the balance of the evening.

"Look at the suit," Frank would say, opening the coat and examining the inside label. "I thought so. Larkey's Boys Store. Calling all lads to Larkey's College-cut clothes, with two pairs of trousers, for only seventeen fifty. This fellow's a real sport, all right."

"Pipe the snakey socks," Bill would say, lifting up the sheik's pant leg. "Green socks and a blue tie. And yellow shoes."

"You kids cut it out or I'll knock you into the middle of next week," the sheik would protest hopelessly. "Have a heart, will you? Beat it, now, and tell your sister I'm here."

Frank brought out a folding ruler that he had slipped into his pocket a few minutes before, and measured the cuffs of the visitor's pants.

"Twenty-three inches," Frank told Bill. "That's collegiate, all right, but it's two inches less collegiate than the cuffs of Anne's sheik. Let's see that tie..."

"Let's see his underwear," Bill suggested.

"Hey, stop that," the sheik protested. "Get your hands off of me. Go tell your sister that I'm here, now, or there's going to be trouble."

One of Ernestine's sheiks drove a motorcycle madly around town, and used to buzz our place three or four times a night in hopes of catching sight of her. Mother and Dad didn't allow the boys to come calling on school nights, but there was always a chance Ernestine might be out in the yard or standing by a window.

One night he parked his motorcycle a couple of blocks away, crept up to the house, and climbed a cherry tree near Ernestine's bedroom window. Fortunately for the motorcyclist, Dad was out of town on business.

Ernestine was doing her homework, and had a spooky feeling she was being watched through the open window. It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn't heard the motorcycle go chugging by the house for several hours, and she immediately grew suspicious.

She walked into a dark room, peeked out from behind a shade, and saw the sheik high up in the cherry tree silhouetted against the moon. She was furious.

"The sneaking Peeping Tom," she told Anne. "Good golly, I was just about to get undressed. There's no telling what he might have seen, if I hadn't had that creepy feeling I was being watched."

"The sight probably would have toppled him right out of the tree," Anne said a little sarcastically. "Do you think he knows you saw him?"

"I don't know, but I don't think so."

"Come on, we'll peek out that dark window again," Anne said. "If he's still there, I've got an idea."

He was still there, and Anne quickly rounded up Martha, Frank, Bill, and Lillian.

"There's a Peeping Tom in the cherry tree," Anne explained. "One of Ernestine's. He needs to be taught a lesson. If he gets away with it and tells the other boys around school, our cherry trees are going to look like the bleachers at the Polo Grounds."

"It would certainly play hob with the crop," Frank said.

"Now, not a word to Mother," Anne continued, "because she'll play her part better if she doesn't know what's going on. Ernestine, go back into your room and tease him along. Don't pull down your shades. Comb your hair, take off your shoes and socks. Even fiddle around with the buttons on your dress, if you want to. Anything to keep him interested. The rest of you, come with me."

We went down into the cellar, where Anne took some wire and fastened a rag to the end of a stick. The rest of us loaded our arms with old newspapers, excelsior, and packing boxes. Then outside Anne poured kerosene over the rag, lighted it, and led a torch parade from the cellar toward the cherry tree.

Ern's sheik was so interested in what seemed about to transpire in her bedroom that he didn't notice us at first. But as the parade drew closer, he looked down.We formed a ring around the base of the tree, and one by one deposited our combustibles at the trunk. As the pile of refuse grew, Anne swung her torch closer and closer to it.

"Christmas," the Peeping Tom shouted in terror. "Are you trying to burn me at the stake? Don't set fire to that.You'll roast me alive."

"Precisely," said Anne. "Precisely what you deserve, too. If you know any prayers, start babbling them."

"It was just a prank," he pleaded. "Just a boyish prank, that's all. Watch out for that torch. Let me come down. I'll go quietly."