First Papers (15 page)

“How marvelous,” Letty said, and looked questioningly about the room, as if to choose the most appropriate place to set an Ice Stove of their own.

“Maybe some day,” Alida Paige said, “we really will have one stove for winter and another for summer. What a wonderful age to be alive in.”

“At the office today,” Evan said, “a new client told us that an aviator in Brussels just flew three hundred eighty-eight miles without a stop. That broke the world’s record by twenty-two miles.”

“Did you see the aviation story too?” Garry asked. “Our new Aviation School—the Army’s? Wait a minute; I’ve got the story.” He went to the bookcase that balanced the breakfront on the other side of the fireplace. The shelves rose to the ceiling, many of the upper ones still empty; down below, the wonder of a little German carpenter had built four cabinets, with wide doors and brass handles.

Garry opened one of these, and at once found what he wanted, the feature section of
The New York Times.
“I meant to take it with me yesterday,” he said. “We have a new man at the lab, Otto Ohrmann, just over from Germany. He’s an expert on cellulose and synthetics. I like to talk things over with him.”

He spread the paper on the table. “Here we are. Sunday, July thirtieth, 1911.”

“‘Aviation School at College Park, Maryland,’” Alida read, “‘To Train Young Officers in all the Fine Points of Driving an Aeroplane … A War Measure … Four Government Hangars …’”

Letty rose and stood next to Garry, looking at the pictures that ran with the story. Handsome young men in uniform were seated two abreast in the center of aeroplanes that did look murderous with their twin wings stretched thirty feet across.

“Perhaps we’re fools to keep on hoping,” Evan said, and took the paper. He turned to another page, heavy with headlines and pictures and charts.

PROSPECT OFA EUROPEAN WAROVER MOROCCO

E
NGLAND,
G
ERMANY AND
F
RANCE
M
AY
B
E
D
RAWN INTO
I
T;
G
ERMANY’S
D
ESIGNS ON
H
OLLAND AND
B
ELGIUM

There were graphs showing the relative size of the army in each country, a helmeted giant indicating 600,000 for Germany, a shorter one showing 500,000 for France, and smaller helmeted fellows grading all the way down to a pygmy representing 25,000 for little Holland.

“Boiling up higher every day for a month,” Evan said, as if he had not paused, “and still we keep hoping it’s only a war-scare, instead of a war.”

“Was it a month ago they sent the
Panther
and that other gunboat out?” Garry asked.

“It seems more like a year,” his mother said.

They’re off, Letty thought, her heart sinking. Now they’ll never talk about anything else. She tried to follow what they said, she knew it was important to everybody alive. But she got so bored, trying to read it or to listen to it. The Germans had sent the
Panther
steaming to a place called Agadir in Morocco because they were furious at the French for spreading around down there, threatening German business interests. The French wouldn’t budge, and all the papers kept predicting war and denouncing the Kaiser and Germany’s “mailed fist.”

She did try nearly every day to read about Europe or Washington, but it was like cramming for an exam, forgetting it the minute the exam was over. For the past week, knowing the Paiges were coming, she had crammed even harder, so she would not be left out when they all started on politics. There had been a big speech in London by Mr. Asquith—no, not Asquith, he was the Prime Minister; by Mr. Lloyd-George, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, and the speech made the French happy, and some of the English too, but not pacifists, or parents with sons at school. He had said the Great Powers of the Entente-Cordiale would stand shoulder-to-shoulder in opposition to Germany.

“That would mean war for all Europe,” Garry said now, angry and at his most positive. “Every small country would be dragged in, before six weeks were over. Damn it, they’re all insane.”

“Maybe it’ll blow over,” Letty began, but nobody heard her.

“‘Thou Shalt Not Kill,’” Garry said. “Except for French and German interests in Morocco!”

He stared at the crystal goblet in his hand, one of a set of original Waterford she had unearthed, but he did not see it. He had forgotten the lovely table, the candles and flowers, the whole room. He had forgotten her, too, and she knew it.

She glanced at his parents’ faces; they also had forgotten her. They were lost, gone, far away. And Garry was with them, lost too.

“Is Mrs. Paige coming out alone on the trolley,” Fran asked, “or is Mr. Paige going to drive her out in the Reo?”

“The car might not be fixed,” Alexandra said. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

“Not that I care who comes,” Fran said. “I just got wondering.”

It was a Sunday morning, the twentieth of August, and her own friends from the beach were asked for two o’clock, when her birthday party would begin. Papa, of course, couldn’t come, but he sent a dollar bill as a present, and Mrs. Paige and Joan and Eli had all promised to arrive by eleven. Joan and Eli were bringing the baby, his first trip anywhere.

“Won’t the baby fall
off
the motorcycle, Mama?” Fee asked as they hurried through breakfast.

Alexandra shuddered. “Don’t make me think of it. I begged Eli, literally got down on my knees and begged him not to, but once he decides on something with that motorcycle—”

“You wrote a letter,” Fee said. “You can’t get down on your knees in a letter.”

“Silly-billy,” Alexandra said cheerfully. “You’re giving
me
English lessons now? Well, why not? But when I think of a two-month-old baby going fifty miles an hour on a motorcycle—”

Fran laughed. “The baby isn’t
driving
it, Ma,” she said. All week she had been looking forward to Sunday and to being fifteen. Last year she had squirmed at the idea of a birthday party in a tent, but it had turned out a huge success, with colored balloons hanging from the center beam, popping off in all directions with the breeze, and with bright tissue-paper streamers floating noisily from the strings that tied back the canvas flaps. Everybody had stayed on and on to play games and sit around singing, until it was dark outside and their little brothers or sisters began arriving to say they had to go home.

This year, she had invited six girls and three boys, and Fee was allowed to ask her best beach friend too. Fran had a new foulard dress in pale blue, that Mama had bought at a sale at Saks for $3.90, and a set of the leather curlers she had always wanted. Her hair was still wound up in them, and Fee kept staring expectantly at the fat knobs all over her head, as if she hoped one would explode and set off the others one by one, like a string of firecrackers.

“Can I blow the balloons up?” Fee asked now, purring out her cheeks.

“Your lungs are stronger than mine,” Alexandra said. “Blow to your heart’s content. There, in that white box, on top of the books.”

Fee raced across to the cardboard box.

“You do the red ones, Fee,” her sister said. “I’ll do the yellow ones.”

“Mama said I could do
all
of them.”

“Well, you can’t,” Fran said. “I want to do some too.”

“But she just said I could!”

“She did not, Miss Selfish.”

“She did so, she did so,” Fee shouted in sudden fury, stamping her foot so hard that sand flew up in a film from the wood flooring.

“Girls, girls,” Alexandra said. “Not today, on Fran’s birthday. Here, I’ll divide them for you, and no more quarreling.”

Fee pushed the box violently away. It fell to the floor, tumbling out blobs of red and yellow, wrinkled and dull. The sight of them touched off new anger in her, hidden and inexplicable, anger at them now, not at Fran. They were supposed to be round and big and shining in the light, but instead they were bunched-up, ugly and lifeless, lying at her feet like dead animals.

She covered her face so she couldn’t see them. “Let
her
do them,” she cried. “I don’t want to do any of them.”

“You great big crank,” Fran said. “You’re getting to be just like Papa.”

“I am not!”

“You are so!” Fran said. “I pity your husband, when you get married.”

“Make her stop, Mama,” Fee stormed, “she always says that.”

“Francesca!” Alexandra said. She had “to raise her voice above theirs, and suddenly she thought, “We’re all fighting, on a day we should be happy.” She turned away from her children and started to make up her bed, her face dulled with sadness. Behind her, Fee’s sobs continued, and without a word Franny took her towel from the third hook, collected her soap-dish and comb, and departed for the bathhouse.

“She’s so mean, she gets me sick,” Fee said. “I hate her. She thinks she’s so beautiful.”

“She’s not really so mean. Come here and let’s talk.”

“I don’t want to.”

“All right, don’t.” Alexandra went to the icebox, and took out the sliced ham, Swiss cheese, chicken, lettuce, mustard, butter and bread. Then, remembering, she put back the ham, and reached for the quince jam instead. There were fifty sandwiches to make, and a dozen other things to prepare. At times, children were savages, all of them.

Behind her, Fee felt her heart crowd with pain, choke with pain. She had had no idea she was going to refuse to talk to her mother, but the words flew out. It wasn’t what she had wanted to say; when she was this angry, something made her say the exact opposite of what she wanted to say, and do just the opposite of what she wanted to do. The words sprang out of her mouth as if they were coming from a stranger’s body.

Once they were out, you could never get them back. You could never escape the result of them. No matter how hard you wished you had held them in, you couldn’t escape the angry face the words put on the face of the person who heard them. Or the sad face.

This, about the balloons. She had never expected to do all the balloons herself, she had never wanted to, had never imagined blowing up every single one. But the moment Fran said she couldn’t, a kind of explosion went off inside, and the words were flying out like sparks, and then everything else was too late.

Just the same, Fran was horrible, to say she was getting to be like Papa. If people were going to pity her husband, she would never never marry as long as she lived.

Desolation washed through her. She looked over to her mother, but she was slicing bread busily, the knife and the loaf all she could think of.

“Mama,” Fee said.

“Yes?”

“Nothing.”

A moment went by; the knife flashed in the light; slice after slice fell on its side, with Mama pulling the loaf back an inch every two or three slices, to make room.

“Is Franny right, Mama?”

“About what, darling?”

Fee went over to the oblong table. The slices of bread lay like a deck of cards spread out, edge overlapping edge. Beyond them, all the slices of chicken and Swiss cheese looked beautiful, and their smells made her remember that today they were having a birthday party.

“Never mind.” She put her finger into one of the holes of the Swiss cheese. “Can I help make the sandwiches?”

“Of course, dear. Wash your hands first. Hurry, we’re going to have a lovely day.”

It
was
a lovely day. A wonderful, a glorious day, Fran thought again and again as the hours ran away, the most beautiful day of my whole life.

Mrs. Paige had not come alone by streetcar. Mr. Paige had driven her out in their red touring car and—she nearly died when she saw him—Garrett Paige was with them.

Garrett and Letty Paige actually, though she hardly saw Letty until later. But Garry, whom she had not seen once since that time he had danced with her, whom she had thought of every day and every night since.

She felt herself go spinny and faint when he came toward the tent, and she hardly heard Mrs. Paige explain that Letty and Garry had come to visit them just as they were leaving for the beach, and was it all right to ask them along without warning?

“My goodness, of course,” Mama said, beaming at all of them.

“Happy Birthday, Francesca,” Mrs. Paige said then, kissing her on the cheek and handing her a large box that said
Lord & Taylor, New York.
“I do hope it’s the right size, dear, but if it isn’t we can change it.”

“Oh, thank you, oh, how nice.”

“Happy Birthday, Fran,” Mr. Paige said.

“Oh, thank you too, Mr. Paige. For my present, I mean.”

“Happy Birthday from me too,” Garry said. “And me,” Letty added.

“Thank you. Oh, it’s lovely.”

Everybody began to talk then and Fran thought, It happened. Until the last minute, her daydream had kept up, that even though Garry and Letty had moved to New York, somehow when the Paiges came out today, Letty and Garry would come too.

While she was combing her hair and doing her special trick with her sunburn, the daydream had been so vivid she had turned around once, half expecting to see Garry right there. But it was only Fee, watching what she was doing with her rouge.

“I’m just making it look the way it does at the beginning of summer,” Fran explained, adding in a nice big-sister voice, “You can do it in a couple of years. I’ll show you how.”

It was a trick she had invented herself; instead of using rouge only on her cheekbones and lips, she also dabbed it faintly across the bridge of her nose and on two spots on her forehead, just under her hair at her temples, just like a new sunburn.

It was becoming, especially today against the light blue of her dress, and Eli and Joan, the first to arrive, said she was getting prettier every year.

They hadn’t brought the baby after all; a threat of rain had settled that. Their birthday gift to Fran was a pyrography set, because she used to love watching Eli burn out designs in leather and wood with his own set. Fee brought out her present then: a set of jacks, all bright and bronzy, with a red rubber ball. Fran nearly blurted out that fifteen was way too old for jacks, but instead she hugged Fee and with a special look over her head at the others, she said, “They’re just what I wanted, honestly. And when I’m not playing with them, you can borrow them and play with them yourself.”