Let Me Tell You (8 page)

Mr. Shapiro came whistling down the street, swinging his briefcase cheerfully. Getting dark early these days, he thought; mustn't forget to tell Marjorie what Hargreaves said to me today. “Hi, fellows,” he said to the kids sitting on the curb, their faces turned around to watch him go down the street. Streetlights are on already, he thought, sure gets dark early these days. He trotted briskly up the steps of number 1018, saw that the door was open a crack, let himself in, and slammed the door behind him.

“Dear?” he called experimentally toward the kitchen at the end of the hall.

The sound of the can opener stopped, and she said, “That you, dear? Dinner's almost ready.”

“Good,” said Mr. Shapiro, and stopped at the hall closet to hang up his coat. Gray hat's getting sort of shabby, he thought, looking at it where it sat on the shelf; wish I could persuade Marjorie to hang up her coat in here instead of leaving it on the bed. Have to speak to Marjorie about getting a new gray hat. Wonder what's for dinner.

“Dinner almost ready, dear?” he called as he passed the kitchen door.

“Ready in a minute.”

Dining room looks pretty good, he thought, on his way to the living room. He took an olive from the dish on the table, then stood looking at the table, thinking: Something different, something. New long scratch in my chair, must be the kid; something else different, though. New dishes? New silverware? Clean tablecloth? That's it, best tablecloth. Company for dinner? Only three places…Probably the laundry didn't come.

Must speak to Marjorie about the laundry, he thought, going into the living room, three of my handkerchiefs last week…“ 'Lo, fella.” The little boy in the middle of the living room floor was making a toy dump truck go back and forth, back and forth, and barely looked up. “ 'Lo,” he said.

“Got a kiss for Daddy?” Mr. Shapiro asked.

“No,” the little boy said.

Mr. Shapiro sat down in his chair. Something wrong, he thought. The whole house is on edge tonight. Pictures a little crooked, chairs not quite in place, carpet a little more faded near the window. Bridge club come today? he thought; no, that's Thursday. Girl, that's it. Girl came to clean.

“Dinner almost ready?” he called out.

“Yeah, when's dinner?” the little boy yelled. “When's dinner, Mom?”

“It'll be on the table in a minute.”

“Meat loaf tonight,” the little boy said.

“Good,” Mr. Shapiro replied absently. He was looking at the books on the table next to his chair.
They Were Expendable—
must have brought that home from the office, he thought, must have brought that home a few nights ago and meant to read it. Ought to read that book tonight, talking about it at lunch today.

“Dinner's on the table!”

“Yaaay,” the little boy shrieked, shooting past Mr. Shapiro, who walked slowly through the dining room. “Got to wash my hands,” he explained to the kitchen door.

“One night in your life you might wash your hands before I…” Her voice followed him into the bathroom, and he closed the door gently on it.

When he reached the dinner table and pulled back his chair, his eyes fell onto the bowl at his place.

“Didn't we have tomato soup last night?” he asked. He lifted his eyes to the woman at the head of the table, and then turned to the little boy. They were staring at him.

The woman rose. “I
thought
you were early tonight,” she said blankly.

“Why…” said Mr. Shapiro. He put down his napkin, went over to the hall closet, and took out his coat and hat. Gray hat looks a little shabby, he thought. The woman and the little boy watched him until the door closed behind him.

Mr. Shapiro went swiftly down the steps and then up the steps of number 1016. He let himself in with his key and slammed the door behind him.

“Dear?” he called out. “The funniest thing…”

The sound of the can opener stopped, and she said, “That you, dear? Dinner's almost ready.”

The greatest guy in the world, she thought, looking at her father. She glanced over her shoulder a moment. The couch, she thought. I sat there last time.

“I think you owe us an explanation,” her father said.

The easy start, she thought. Allowance for excitement or backtracking. Better not say anything.

“Your mother and I are terribly disappointed in you.”

The catch in the voice, she thought, the appropriate quaver.

“I don't suppose there's any way we can tell you how we feel; you don't seem to have any consideration for us or for anything but your own selfish plans.”

Don't get mad, she thought. They're only just starting to work on me.

“I suppose you think it was very gracious of you to come home for two days to tell us about this young man?”

A long pause. Better say something, she thought. This is getting one-sided.

“You knew about him a long time ago,” she said.

“But why do you have to—” her mother asked. She began to cry.

“We think you could have shown us a little more consideration, that's all,” her father said.

The greatest guy in the world, she thought. And he's letting her crying work on me for a while right now. Better not talk again for a few minutes.

“After all,” her father was saying again, “you know that we don't like this young man.”

What do you want me to do? she thought, say okay, the whole thing's off, I won't get married?

“If it were only someone—” her mother began again.

“Well, Mother,” her father said, “I never thought we'd be ashamed of her, did you?”

Wait now, she thought. Go very slow on this one. Her mother was crying again.

“Why, for God's sake?” her father said, slamming his hand down on the arm of the chair. “If it were only someone fair and honest and aboveboard…”

He just thought up those words, she thought. Take it very slow.

“I want to be proud of you,” her father said. “I want to be able to tell the whole world how proud I am of my daughter. And now—”

Okay, she thought. Take it now. “I'll leave tonight,” she said, “if you're too ashamed of me.” I can work up a good quaver too, she thought.

“No, please, listen,” her mother said.

“Don't get high-handed with me, young woman,” her father said. “I won't listen to that sort of talk from you. You're still my daughter, you know, until…”

As long as she could hold on with both hands she could keep from laughing. You can't just walk out in the middle of it, she thought. They'd have to say it all to each other, then.

“Mother,” her father asked, “what are we going to tell our friends?”

The greatest guy in the world, she thought. Jesus, you poor old man.

It was the first golden week of spring, and Mrs. Arthur William Morgan was almost completely unaffected by it. To begin with, she rarely saw the spring weather anyway, since she got on a commuter train every morning before the weather had rightly settled itself for the day, and took a commuter train home again in the evening, after everything the weather could do with itself in one day was over with, and spent the time in between in her fancy air-conditioned office designing clothes for fashionable women to wear the following autumn.

On Saturdays and Sundays, Mrs. Morgan frequently caught a passing glimpse of the weather between getting up and running off to somewhere to see someone, but spring weather is a thing to soak in, and it had no time to do any real affecting of Mrs. Morgan. Mr. Morgan, who habitually caught a commuter train four minutes later than his wife's in the morning, and seven minutes earlier than his wife's in the evening, could hardly have been expected to call his wife's attention to the soft air, the gentle sun, or the warm breeze.

At any rate, in this first really golden week of spring, Mrs. Morgan had hired a new maid. Not actually hired, that is, and she wasn't really a maid, if you stopped to think about it, but Mrs. Arthur William Morgan was so indiscriminate about the persons in her employ, since they all merged in her mind, eventually, into one inferior character, that you might as well say that Mrs. Morgan had hired a new maid, and be done with it. The person had come in answer to an advertisement in the local paper: “Wanted, housekeeper and governess for twin children, seven years old. Good salary. Best of references required. Write for appointment.”

Out of all the letters, Mrs. Morgan had selected one neatly written in a fine, old-fashioned hand on heavy, expensive paper; anything expensive appealed to Mrs. Morgan. She had gone so far as to give up one of her precious Sunday afternoons to an interview, and perhaps in some subtle way the spring weather touched Mrs. Morgan that day, because the applicant was no sooner seen than hired, and Mrs. Morgan felt that she had made her usual good bargain. The applicant was a smiling, cheerful woman, perhaps a shade older than Mrs. Morgan expected, but she certainly seemed lively enough to keep up with seven-year-old twins.

And, although it was not important, the twins liked her too. As Andy said to Anne, that strange spring night when the lights were out and only the moonlight enabled them to see each other, sitting up in their twin beds, “
I
like her because she smiles a lot.”

“
I
like her,” said Anne, “because she has candy in her pocket.”

“Always thinking about candy and stuff,” Andy said scornfully. “Anyway, she said she
always
has candy in her pocket.”

“That's a good thing,” said Anne. “I wish it was already tomorrow,” she added wistfully. “I'm going to be tiny and live in the dollhouse all day.”

“I'd like to be a squirrel, I guess,” Andy said. “Maybe a bear, or a cowboy, only that's way out west, and I guess I better stay around home the
first
time. Maybe a tiger. Or I guess a squirrel.”

“You could be a pig,” Anne suggested hopefully. “I wish it was tomorrow. She said we could do anything we liked, and I'm going to be tiny and live in the dollhouse. Maybe you want to be a puppy?”

“Old Anne,” Andy said.

“Or a cow?” Anne was getting sleepy. “Or a horse?”

“Old Anne.” They began to giggle softly.

“Or a cat?”

“Old Anne.”

“Or a pig,” Anne said, her voice muffled in the pillow. “Pig,” she added, and was asleep. Andy, with his masculine superiority, outlasted her valiantly; he heard her take two deep breaths before his own eyes shut. “Squirrel,” he said, and smiled in his sleep.

Downstairs, Mrs. Arthur William Morgan said to her husband, in that soft and persuasive voice wives use sometimes, “After all, I have my work, too. Please let's not forget, dear, that my work is
almost
as important as yours. Almost,” she said again, and her voice, slipping away into silence, implied strongly that she was being wonderfully flattering to his work.

“Aren't I ever going to hear about anything but your work?” Mr. Arthur William Morgan looked at his wife irritably. “I'm
tired
of hearing about your work.”

“Not half as tired,” Mrs. Morgan said softly, stepping into the advantage, “as I am, sometimes.”

“All right,” her husband said. “So you've got a very important job and you're a very important woman and everyone thinks you're wonderful, and no one, not even your husband, is allowed to think any different. Except sometimes,” he added bitterly, “I get to wishing I had a wife who wasn't
quite
so important and who stayed home sometimes and—”

“I suppose you wish you'd married someone else?” his wife asked, still using her same soft voice. “I suppose you wish you'd married—”

Their argument, begun in a familiar strain, went on in channels already so smoothly worn by years of bickering that neither of them bothered any longer to think about what they were saying. Mr. Morgan remarked that other wives found it possible to stay home and care for their homes and children; Mrs. Morgan pointed out that other wives did not have important, responsible positions. Mrs. Morgan added to this statement its usual corollary, which was that other wives did not have weak-kneed husbands who couldn't take on half the responsibility their wives did. Mr. Morgan retorted that he personally didn't see what was so damned important about Mrs. Morgan and her tiresome work except that it seemed to make Mrs. Morgan feel she had the right to tell everyone, Mr. Morgan in particular, what to do. Mrs. Morgan said that
some
one had to tell him. Mr. Morgan said that he was capable of taking care of himself. Mrs. Morgan said that she had never felt that subservience was necessary in a wife. Mr. Morgan said…Their voices went on and on.

In the kitchen, the new maid, her pocket full of candy and her eyes twinkling wickedly at some secret knowledge, listened first to the voices of the children as they drifted down from the open window of their room; when there was silence upstairs, she was forced to listen to the monotony of the argument going on between Mr. and Mrs. Morgan. After she had put the last dish away, given a final polish to the sink, and surveyed her new kitchen one last time to make sure that everything was in perfect order against the morning, the new maid smiled at the door behind which Mr. and Mrs. Morgan were bickering and went soundlessly upstairs to the room where the children slept in identical positions, as befitted twins. They had both kicked their blankets off, and she covered them. Andy said
“Blugh?”
inquiringly, and Anne answered him,
“Mnh.”

Then the new maid, who had that day, by Mrs. Morgan's authority, been given full charge of the children, the house, the cooking, the laundry, and presumably the mice in the pantry and the pumpkins in the garden, went soundlessly on her small feet to the room Mrs. Morgan had assigned her and where she had unpacked her belongings that afternoon. Much, much later, Mr. and Mrs. Morgan resolved their argument at the same point of mutual weariness at which it had been resolved so many times before, and went to bed.

In the morning, the sun rose as usual, and sent its usual impertinent rays to glitter on the eyelids of Mrs. Morgan. She opened her eyes, stirred uneasily, blinked, and sat up in bed. The room was full of sun, it was emphatically spring weather, and Mrs. Arthur William Morgan leaped out of bed with a firmness and resiliency she had not employed for a very long time. She slid expertly through the formality of washing, dressed quickly, not bothering with her shoelaces, gave her hair a civil pat with the brush, and ran downstairs. It's morning, she was thinking, the sun is bright, the sky is blue, and I am hungry. She ran into the kitchen, and said, as she ran, “Can I please have a cookie?”

“No cookie,” said the new maid, looking severely at the plates she was setting onto the kitchen table. “Not before breakfast.”

“
What
's for breakfast?” said Mrs. Morgan. “Can I have mine now, right away, quick?”

“You can have it when it's ready,” said the new maid. “Not before.”

“But I'm
hungry,
” said Mrs. Morgan. “I'm
starving.
”

The new maid half smiled. She set a bowl of hot oatmeal down at one place, and beckoned with her head at Mrs. Morgan. “There you go,” she said.

Mrs. Morgan sat down, twisted her feet comfortably around the rungs of her chair, and said “Oatmeal? Oatmeal
again
?” She slid her napkin out of the ring and onto the floor, bent to retrieve it, and dropped her spoon. “I
hate
oatmeal,” she said. “I want to put my
own
sugar on.”

“You mind your manners,” said the new maid, “or you won't have any sugar at all.”

Mrs. Morgan ate half her oatmeal in three spoonfuls, then lingered over the other half until it was clammy. She bit largely into a piece of toast, and broke the rest of the toast into small pieces, some of which she dropped into her fruit juice glass; some of them she hid inside her napkin ring. “Can I please be excused?” she asked finally.

The new maid looked down at the dish of oatmeal, sighed, and said, “Three more spoonfuls and you can run along.”

Mrs. Morgan dawdled over her three spoonfuls until she was excused without them, and then, free of the ritual of breakfast and possessed of a cookie, she ran out into the garden. She wandered for a while just looking; the grass was unbelievably green, the flowers just beginning to show color in the bright spring morning. The sky was so blue it hurt Mrs. Morgan's eyes to look into it. When she looked up once, she saw a gray squirrel race happily up the trunk of the tallest tree in the garden; when he reached a high branch he stopped, looking curiously around and down at Mrs. Morgan, and winked his eyes at her amiably.

“Come on down, squirrel,” Mrs. Morgan said. She held out her hands and called to him, “
Come
on,
come
on. I'll give you some peanuts,” she added winningly, but the gray squirrel only winked mockingly at her and ran on, up the tree and out of sight.

Mrs. Morgan went on undiscouraged through the garden; when she turned a corner of the path she saw, suddenly, a small boy staring back at her. For a minute they regarded each other soberly, and then the small boy said, “Who're
you
? Think you're big?”

Mrs. Morgan stood on one foot and swung the other back and forth. “I'm bigger'n
you,
” she pointed out. “I'm better'n you, too.”

“I'm smarter'n
you,
” the small boy said.

“I'm smarter'n
you,
” Mrs. Morgan said, “and I can boss you if I want to.”

“You can
not,
” said the little boy.

“Let's play house,” suggested Mrs. Morgan. “I'll be the daddy and you'll be the mommy and I must come home from my office and you must be cooking dinner and I must say—”

“I don't want to play house,” said the little boy. “I want to play army.”

“How do you play army?” said Mrs. Morgan.

“First I kill you and then you kill me,” said the little boy, reasonably.

“I don't want to play
that,
” said Mrs. Morgan. “That's a silly, silly game.”

“It is
not,
” said the little boy.

“It is
so,
” said Mrs. Morgan.

She turned and ran away, through the garden and back into the kitchen. “Can I have another cookie?” she asked.

After lunch she was tired and ready for a rest, but the minute she was put into her room with the shades drawn and the door closed she got out of bed and crept softly in her bare feet over to the dresser. There she opened all the jars and bottles of powder and cream and perfume; most of these she rubbed onto her face and into her hair. She carefully removed all of her clothes and then, as carefully, put them on again, but backward. Then she wriggled under the bed and played there until the new maid came and said she could get up from her rest. And, the new maid added, tightening her lips, Mrs. Morgan could just keep her clothes on backward for the rest of the day.

Later in the afternoon, as she played and danced among the flowers, Mrs. Morgan met the little boy again in the garden, and he yelled at her from a distance, “Nyah, nyah,
youuuu
can't boss
meeee.
” She chased him, but he escaped her and stood behind a bush and jeered at her, as the squirrel capered above their heads in the late afternoon sunlight. Mrs. Morgan began to cry, finally, and ran away herself, into another part of the garden. It occurred to her that she could go into the house and ask for another cookie, but she had just turned the corner to the front steps when the sun, which had been meditating on this scene unnoticed for quite a while, went down.

Mrs. Morgan, her foot on the first of the steps, turned when she heard a sound behind her, and saw her husband.

“Evening, Agnes,” he said formally.

“Arthur,” Mrs. Morgan replied as formally. Together, in silence, they went up the steps to the front door. He held the door open for her and they went inside. In the living room the lamps were on, and Mrs. Morgan thought briefly how comfortable and warm it looked after the chill that had followed the sun's setting. Then Mr. Morgan said, “Why, look at you. You've got everything on backward.”

“Well, you've got mud all over yourself,” she said angrily. After one more mutually disapproving glance, they turned their backs on each other.

“Dinner is served,” said the new maid, from the doorway.

Mrs. Morgan sat down at the table, looked deeply into her bowl of consommé, and said, “Heavens, I'm tired.”

“So am I,” said her husband, as though the fact surprised him.