Lady (6 page)

Ma was a worker all right. Her house was her house, and she saw to it that it was the best house she could make it, and with us assigned our daily chores -- the week's washing on Mondays, the trash and ashes out on Wednesdays, painting, raking, mowing, shoveling coal, cleaning our rooms -- we were like a troop of elves in thrall to her industrious broom. But we all knew, in spite of the fact that she worked the mangle at the Sunbeam and routed us out of bed in the morning with fierce cries and cold washcloths, that she loved us and exhausted herself providing for us. Though she had few of them, she enjoyed beautiful things, and she loved painting and music and poetry. I confided to Mrs. Harleigh that Ma's secret ambition had once been to go on the stage, that she had in fact entertained the soldiers in training-camp shows with monologues and recitations during the World War, when Pa was courting her.

As Mrs. Harleigh drew me out on the subject of my family, I found it was easier for me to voice things I would not ordinarily have disclosed; small private thoughts that I was sure must interest me alone, but all of which seemed to interest her, too.

"Tell me about school," she continued, and laughed when I made a face that summed up my opinion of schools in general and mine in particular. Well, I said, our teacher Miss Bessie was okay -- we all really liked Miss Bessie -- but Miss Grimes, our principal, was a pain. Nobody liked the dreaded and irascible Miss Grimes.

"Does she give you the strap?"

"Boy, does she!"

"'Spoil the rod and spare the child,' I say. I suppose things haven't changed much. Miss Grimes was principal when I was a girl."

"Did you go to our school?"

"No, I went to school on Knobb Street But we heard about Miss Grimes, even up there."

When I mentioned that Nonnie had wanted to be a teacher but had had to give up college for us all, it seemed to strike a chord. "Yes," she said, "I know how that is. Poor Nonnie, chained to a sink and stove. And Lew plays the banjo, you say?"

I said we all played an instrument of one kind or another; part of the money from the Sunbeam Laundry went weekly for music lessons; Ma was adamant.

"Do you play together?"

"No." We never did much of anything together.

She didn't say anything just then, but I knew what she was thinking. Then she said, "What kind of books?"

"Ma'am?"

"If you don't read Hans Christian Andersen, what kind of books do you read?"

I slunk down in my chair, wishing I had heeded Ma's eternal advice that we all should use books more. None of us did, except Aggie, and I hated my schoolbooks. "Well, I've read about Paul Revere's ride, and --"

"Yes?" She had a way of crinkling her eyebrows that was so funny, so filled with her own amusement. I wanted to tell her I'd read the whole history of the United States or the dictionary or something.

"
Famous Funnies
," I replied weakly, dropping my eyes.

"Ah?"

"And -- um -- Big Little Books."

"Oh,
those
." She made a funny, icky face. "Which are your favorites?"

Well, I said, I liked
Hairbreadth Harry
, and
Smilin' Jack
, and
Terry and the Pirates
. "And there's
Flash Gordon
, of course." Secretly I was aroused by the Witch Queen of Mongo, who wore slinky black dresses and was marvelously wicked. "And
Mickey Mouse
and the
Sky Pirates
, and
Tarzan
." Tarzan was currently disguised in a crocodile skin and battling an Egyptian pharaoh.

My dinner companion said, "I used to read
The Dream of a Welsh Rarebit Fiend
when I was your age. I suppose the comics have changed a good deal. Although
The Katzenjammer Kids
haven't. I see them every Sunday. What else do you read?"

"We -- um -- listen to the radio a lot."

"Oh, the radio." She dismissed that invention with a wave of her hand. "Have you never read
Treasure Island
?"

"No, Ma'am."

"I see. Well, books perhaps cannot do for you what a piece of music does, or a painting, or a play on the stage, but they can perform their own kind of magic."

She lit a cigarette and streamed smoke through her nostrils. "What instrument do you play?"

I confessed I went to Mr. Auerbach up at Packard Lane every Tuesday afternoon, lugging a French horn, on which I was trying to learn the polka from
Schwanda, der Dudelsackpfeifer
.

"The French horn's a noble instrument!" Lady said enthusiastically.

I thought it was lousy. Ma had been swayed when the music teacher told her the set of my teeth was perfect for a brass instrument; the truth was the French-horn player had gone on to junior high. Lucky Harry got to play comet.

"You have a musical family. We must have a musical evening one night soon."

"You mean it? I can come back? All of us can come?" I couldn't believe my ears.

"Of course, all of you," she said gaily. "Larks, my darling, we must have larks." Her smile vanished like a ghost and she looked at me with a grave expression. "It's been very nice, having you here. There have never been children in this house since I have lived in it. It's -- as it should be."

"When can we come?"

"Well, let me see. I'm alone on Thursdays and Sundays. Perhaps a Sunday would be best."

Sunday was Jack Benny, but I didn't care.

"Let me consult with Jesse and Elthea and see what would be convenient," she concluded. She rolled her napkin, placed it in a silver ring -- monogrammed: curly, curvy "A.H." -- and rose from her chair. "Will you help me bring out the dishes? I don't want to leave them for Elthea." As we carried things back to the kitchen, she asked, "Do you know who Miss Shedd is?"

"No, Ma'am."

"She's our librarian. A remarkable old lady who loves children to come and take books out and read them. We must arrange for you to meet her one of these days."

She was at the dishpan, I was drying, when the doorbell rang.

"Darn, who can that be out in all this snow?" She took her hands from the water and flicked the suds.

"I can go."

"If it's Colonel Blatchley, invite him in and offer him a cigar."

I walked down the hall and peeked through the curtain of the window next to the door. Waiting on Mrs. Harleigh's stoop was a dark figure. The coat collar was turned up around the face, but I could tell it was not Colonel Blatchley. Nor was it anyone else I had ever seen before. Somehow I had the feeling I didn't like his looks. I put my hand on the brass handle and opened the door.

"Is Mrs. Harleigh at home?"

The voice was hoarse, and its owner seemed to be making an effort to keep it at a whisper.

"Yes. Do you want to come in?"

For a moment he looked uncertain. His mouth was clamped in a grim line, and his unblinking watery eyes shone in the gleam of the carriage lamp. His pale skin was splotched with pinkish freckles and his reddish, slightly curly hair was slicked back, wet with snow. He carried a leather briefcase, on whose battered flap was stamped the name "OTT." I immediately thought of Mel Ott, right-fielder for the Giants, whose picture Lew had in his bubble-gum card collection.

When I glanced at the flakes flying past me into the hall, the man finally spoke. "Tell Mrs. Harleigh someone would like a word with her, please."

"Yes, sir."

I left him on the stoop and let the door swing while I ran back down the hall to the kitchen.

"Is it the Colonel?" Mrs. Harleigh asked, rinsing a goblet

"No'm. It's Mr. Ott."

"Ott? Ott? I don't know any --"

"He has red hair . . ."

The goblet crashed against the porcelain sink and shattered. She stared at the broken pieces, then, methodically wiping her hands on a dishtowel, she removed her apron, and quickly left the room.

While I gingerly picked the fragments of crystal out of the sink, the murmur of voices drifted up the hallway. It was all unintelligible to me; presently the conversation stopped and the door closed. I waited for Mrs. Harleigh to come back to the kitchen, but there was nothing but silence. I dropped the pieces of the goblet in the can under the sink and went into the hall. It was empty. Walking to the foot of the stairs, I looked up and as I placed my hand on the newel post I heard a low muffled moan. It came from the dining room.

She was standing in front of the mirror, staring at her wobbly reflection jn the glass. She seemed unaware of me as I came in the room and walked to her side. I watched as long as I could in the mirror as a tear trickled down her cheek, then threw myself against her, holding her elbow in an awkward way, trying to squeeze her hand.

"Don't, please, Mrs. Harleigh, please!" I hugged her and tried to think how I could make her stop. It made me furious that a redheaded man in a snowstorm could cause such pain.

She was still staring at her reflection in the mirror. Her features looked distorted, narrowing and bulging with the imperfect glass. Then she wiped her eyes with my napkin in her hand, and as if to hide her image she hung the napkin on the mirror. Then she disengaged herself and removed the linen place mats from the table and put them away. "If we are truly to be friends," she said over her shoulder, carrying the saltcellars to the sideboard, "you must call me 'Lady.'"

Perhaps it should have been a thrill, her asking me to call her by the name all the grownups used, but I could think of nothing else but the man at the door, his bright glistening eyes, his tight, mean mouth, his snow-covered red hair. And not wearing a hat, on such a snowy evening. I could not then say "Lady," but "Please," I entreated her, "who was he -- Mr. Ott?"

"Mr. Ott?" She gave a wry twist to the name as she repeated it. "Who was he?" She thought a moment, then smiled a strange, bitter smile and, without looking, removed the napkin from the mirror and put it in a napkin ring. "Mr. Ott," she murmured with a trace of amusement. She lifted from the table the Oriental bowl holding the winter cherries, but the single shake of her head told me she had no reply to my question.

I did not see her again for some time. No one did, and Mrs. Sparrow gave out the news that Mrs. Harleigh "wasn't herself," and was going through another of her "retirements." Each day I eagerly awaited a glimpse of furs and a veiled hat, to catch her going out in the Minerva landaulet, but in the brick house across the Green behind the drawn shades all was silence and I yearned in vain.

In school and out, I languished like a lover and, like a lover betrayed, I thought all the worst, the unkindest things, telling myself she wasn't worth a second glance. How cruel she was. How unfeeling after having led me on, promising me "Larks, my darling, we must have larks," and then not even so much as a sight of her. Shut herself up in the house and nary a wave or a hello, let alone a musical evening. What was wrong with people like that? Didn't they know they hurt people's feelings?

Still, it was only my feelings I was concerned with, not hers. I gave no thought to what might have occasioned her "retirement," or what she might be suffering in consequence. I thought only of the promised musical evening, and every Sunday when Jack Benny came on the radio and said "Jell-O again," I wished I was over at Mrs. Harleigh's. But I knew grownups had a habit of forgetting things they had promised, things important to children, and I decided she, for all her specialness, must be no different from the rest.

And she hadn't even paid me for doing her shoveling!

In addition to my weaselly thoughts regarding the lady across the Green, I was consumed by boyish curiosity about the red-haired man. Once, when the sun was going down and the tree trunks stretched long blue shadows across the snow, I saw a figure hurrying in the direction of the brick house: a man in an overcoat, the collar turned up, his hatless head bent against the wind. Sitting at the worktable in the sleeping porch where I was building an airplane model of Wiley Post's
Winnie Mae
, I decided it was the sinister Mr. Ott returning, but the man continued past the house and disappeared in the gloom beyond the streetlight.

Another evening I saw the carriage lamps come on. The door opened and someone slipped out. I recognized it at once: the fur coat, the little fur hat, and boots. Mrs. Harleigh came down the walk and stepped onto the roadway, her hands buried in her pockets. For half an hour I sat at the table, chin cupped in my hands, my plane model forgotten, watching her slow progress around the Green. Passing our house, she did not glance up at my window as I hoped she might, but continued her solitary circuit until who should come plopping along through the snow but Rabbit Hornaday. The Green-Eyed Monster dwelt in my breast as I saw her stop and talk, pulling his dirty little cap down over his ears and doing up the top button of his windbreaker. Me she wouldn't look at, but Rabbit Hornaday got a pat and a chuck under the chin and a wave before he plopped off through the snow again.

How I hated Rabbit Hornaday!

Hated her, as well. But then the time came when I almost stopped thinking of her, and of her mysterious visitor. I even stopped hating Rabbit Hornaday. The river was frozen and we couldn't think about anything except skating.

After school we would hurry home to get our skates from the back porch and make our way down through the snowy fields behind Mrs. Harleigh's house to the Cove. Out on the ice a hockey game would already be in progress and around it red and blue jacketed figures would speed by, scarves flying, sprays of ice shooting up from the tips of the flashing blades. And you could depend on it, there would be dumb four-eyes Rabbit Hornaday, sliding around on the soles of his shoes and cutting in everyone's way. Secretly I gloated that he didn't own skates.

Rabbit Hornaday was a curious case. He lived up by the railroad tracks near the Rose Rock soda-pop works. His sister Dora "wasn't all there," and she and Rabbit had come to town to stay with their aunt, after their mother, having fallen in with some reprehensible characters who involved her in an illicit bootlegging scheme, was sent to the women's correctional institution at Middlehaven. Rabbit showed off by eating worms, alive or dead, but that wasn't why he was called the Scourge of Pequot Landing. The very day he arrived, he spent the afternoon trampling down every flower bed along Main Street, unscrewing the plug on the fire hydrant in front of the Spragues' house, and opening Colonel Blatchley's rabbit hutch to commit mayhem on several of the Colonel's prize Belgian hares. It was not difficult to imagine how Harold Hornaday was instantly rechristened Rabbit, nor how he earned the undying contempt of every kid in that part of town.