Authors: Jane Smiley
Andrew's mother and Mrs. Hitchens were far from fatigued by their journey. They
had taken a private room on the sleeper and had been pleased by the provisions in the
dining car--"as elegant as anything in Europe, and there is so much more time to enjoy
everything. In Europe, as soon as you have settled in, well, now you are in Munster
already, and must disembark! But here! Well, the train journey is a vacation in itself. I
understood from the porter that there are some families that simply ride about, living on
the railroads. The scenery passes and, rough as some of it is, it's quite all right with me to
look at it and not to have to go out into it, or, God forbid, trek through it, don't you agree,
Mrs. Hitchens?" Mrs. Hitchens nodded enthusiastically.
They had lovely weather. They tramped about the island while the ladies gave her
news of home, which was welcome in several ways, one of which was that it did not
cause her to miss their town, or anyone in it, other than her mother and Beatrice. Mrs.
Early gave her a long letter from her mother, which Margaret read page by page but not
all at once. This letter, mostly about the grandchildren, she found surprisingly painful,
even taken in small doses. Of course Beatrice was pregnant again, and due in September
("very uncomfortable, I must say, and partly because she never denies herself a single
indulgence and has had to have all of her dresses remade and pieced out"), and little Lucy
May showed an amazing musical gift. ("Much superior to Beatrice's--perhaps the Hart
side is musical, too? They say that Jewish families often are. At any rate, the darling child
climbs up onto the piano bench and plays 'Twinkle, Twinkle' with two hands, and seems
to understand harmony, though she is only three.") She had news of Dora: "Can you
believe, Margaret, that Dora has gone to New York City, where she went to a lecture by
Mrs. Tarbell? After the lecture, she walked right up to her and told her where she was
from and then handed her a sheaf of articles she wrote, and Mrs. Tarbell took her out to
tea, and the short version of the tale is that Dora might get a position at
McClure's
--'or
something even better.' Mrs. Bell pretends to be frantic that Dora will certainly never
marry now, but she seems happy enough, though Mr. Bell considers Ida Tarbell the
'Devil's own second cousin.' Robert, however, is quite proud of his sister." She could see
that her mother wrote about the grandchildren and Dora partly to avoid writing about
herself--her handwriting was not exactly shaky, but more spidery than it had been, and
she who had, since the death of her husband, leapt out of bed at dawn and gone straight to
work planting or pruning or harvesting or canning, now reported that she lay in bed until
eight each morning ("although I hate for half the day to pass before I can get anything
done").
On the second morning of her visit, Mrs. Early sat her down on their sofa and put
her hand on Margaret's knee. She said, "My dear Margaret, I'm afraid you must think
about what it might be like to do without your dear mother at some point. Though she is
younger than I am by two years or more, I do think her health is fading."
"She says in her letter that she's easily tired."
"Twice I've dropped by to take her out for a little drive, and she's said she's just
too tired to go." She sighed. "I sent my girl over to help her with the spring cleaning."
"She should go live with Beatrice."
"But she says that the boys are too wild, and give her a headache. And now with
this baby ..." She shook her head.
"Elizabeth
is
easier
to get along with."
"I asked your mother three weeks ago whether she wanted to go with me to St.
Louis, and make a visit to the spa at Meramec Highlands. This time of year, it's very
restorative, and not terribly far from Elizabeth and the girls, but she told me she never
liked St. Louis."
Margaret thanked her. Mrs. Early smiled at her in a kindly way and put her hand
to her hair, which was grayer now, but still very thick. She replaced a comb and
smoothed the front of her skirt, which was a rich piece of cut velvet, purple with a black
shading. She had gotten more stout, but, as tall as she was, she could carry the weight.
She went on: "Did I show you the books I brought you, Margaret, dear? I remembered
that you liked the Sherlock Holmes, so I brought you another book by Mr. Doyle, set
during the Hundred Years' War. And Mrs. Hitchens thought you might like her book of
ghost stories that she read in the train. I must say, I heard her gasp once or twice in the
upper sleeper!" She smiled again, and all of a sudden, surprising even herself, Margaret
leaned forward and put her arms around Mrs. Early, and Mrs. Early held her to her breast
and, for a moment or two, stroked her hair, and Margaret couldn't help weeping. But then
they stood up, and Andrew came in from his daily task of dropping the time ball.
The next day, the two ladies took a train to Napa to look about up there. Mrs. Lear
filled them a picnic basket. It was a pleasure to cook for the two of them, of course, and
Mrs. Early was very tactful about showing her some recipes she knew--pancakes in the
French manner ("though the Germans love them, too, they are so thin and light, with a
little confectioners' sugar and some rough-cut marmalade, and, you know, Margaret, it
doesn't hurt a bit to warm up the marmalade and stir in a quarter-cup of rum. It's very
bracing first thing in the morning, and there's absolutely no harm in it").
From Napa, she and Mrs. Hitchens brought two tennis rackets and some balls for
the Lear boys, and by the time Margaret was up the next morning, the ladies had strung a
rope between two trees in the backyard, and induced someone to cut the grass very close.
She had Theodore and Martin out, laughing and hitting one of the balls back and forth
over the rope, while Hubert and Dorsett awaited their turns by swinging in the trees. Mrs.
Hitchens was sitting in a chair, fanning herself with the morning paper, but Andrew's
mother was trotting back and forth, showing the boys how to grip their rackets and aim
for the ball as it went by them. Martin seemed an apt pupil, already hitting the ball more
than missing it; Hubert and Dorsett swung past her once or twice; then she saw Hubert
perch himself up on the railing of the second-floor balcony and sit there, watching and
rolling a cigarette, which he then smoked with a meditative air before swinging back to
the tree. The whole scene was so lively and good-natured that Margaret thought of trying
to persuade the two ladies to stay into the following week, just for her own enjoyment.
Four days was hardly enough of them! And then, that afternoon, Mrs. Early enlisted both
her and Mrs. Hitchens in teaching the boys "a nice game of Missouri poker, just a bit of
five-card stud--which stands for 'studious,' boys, which is what you should be every day
of school." They used the boys' stash of matches for chips, and she ensured that while
they were learning they lost, but once they knew the principles of the game, they each
won a bit, which she paid them out of her own bag, a half-dollar apiece.
When Margaret suggested that evening that the two ladies stay longer, Mrs. Early
exclaimed, "Oh, goodness! You will have quite another dose of us after we have had our
fill of the great city of San Francisco, and the famous Palace Hotel. Mr. Enrico Caruso is
performing
Carmen
, which I have never seen, so we can't miss that. I assure you that, by
the time we head east, you will be glad to see us go." Margaret laughed, but she couldn't
imagine being glad to see them go.
With his mother, Andrew was much as he had been in Missouri, polite and even
jovial, but taciturn by comparison with his customary manner. He told about the gunshots
into the mud, which made his mother laugh, and she said, "My goodness, Andrew, that is
clever! And you made drawings of the craters? What if you made photographic plates of
them, wouldn't that be extraordinary? I wonder how you would do that." Andrew had not
made photographic plates of the mud craters, but he instantly sat up and declared that he
would do so, and that afternoon they tramped around Vallejo, looking for a photography
studio and a photographer whom they might induce to make plates of the whole
operation--Andrew and Hubert shooting from the tops of trees, and then the craters
themselves. Even for Andrew, his mother was an invigorating presence. Then she said,
"And that astronomy journal will certainly take it, it's so brilliant. Just put together an
irresistible package, Andrew. You've done that before." Then she went over to the Lears'
house and got Hubert to show her the gun they had used, and tell her all about his other
exploits, which also made her laugh.
The following day, Mrs. Early and Mrs. Hitchens took the three o'clock ferry, the
General Frisbie
, which was a fast boat and Andrew's favorite (two hours to the city),
quite luxurious and well appointed inside. You could buy any number of things on the
boat, including drinks in the saloon. They waited on the dock, and they talked about how
the ladies would arrive in San Francisco at five, and no doubt be in their hotel eating
oysters by seven at the latest. They were dressed in their most stylish outfits--Mrs. Early
in green, trimmed with white and edged with navy blue, and Mrs. Hitchens in dark gray
with a high white collar and sleeves edged in a deep red. Her hat carried a tight bouquet
of silk rosebuds just the same color as the edging on her dress, and Mrs. Early's hat
sported two curled egret feathers and a bunch of cherries. They embraced and kissed
goodbye; then Margaret watched them board the ferry, looking about all the time, with
the eager curiosity that both of them always seemed to display. As she and Andrew
walked back from the ferry building, Margaret thought she understood more about him-she saw he had his mother's curiosity and energy. She found this reassuring, which was
surprising--she had not realized she was in need of reassurance. She said, "They looked
very elegant." Andrew laughed cheerfully and gave her a squeeze around the waist. They
heard the
General Frisbie
blow her whistle just then.
They never saw Andrew's mother or Mrs. Hitchens again.
MARGARET had been in an earthquake before, back in Missouri, in 1895. They
were sitting at the supper table when the water in their glasses began to slosh, and then
some dishes on a railing over the fireplace rolled back and forth and one crashed to the
floor. Lavinia jumped up from the table to look out the front window. Because it was
dark, she could see very little, but it was a nice night--no wind or rain, only some of the
fruit trees in their yard swaying. She said, "An earthquake! God preserve us!" and she
told them about another famous earthquake that her own grandfather had heard of, down
where Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Kentucky came together. The Mississippi ran
backward and changed its bed; forests broke in two and toppled over; a noise such as no
one ever heard before or after terrified the people and sent the cows and horses racing
into the woods, some never to be found. That night, in bed, Margaret, Elizabeth, and
Beatrice declared that they didn't see how they could ever stand to have such a thing
happen to them. And then they forgot about it.
When Andrew and she awakened to the shaking of their little house and the
falling of the lamp off the bedside table, he leapt out of bed before the first shake had
ended. She stayed where she was, having that strange feeling that the play was
commencing all around her, a feeling that immobilized her, until he grabbed her hand and
pulled her out of the house. It was just getting light. They stood in the middle of the
street--it was impossible to walk--looking first at their own chimney, which did not
topple, and then down the street. The buildings and trees seemed to have a haze about
them, or to be themselves rendered hazy. Andrew said that this was the effect of the
shaking: the eye could not take in the object. The trees seemed not to go back and forth
but around in little circles, which Andrew declared was akin to a needle on a piece of
paper, and, if it could be measured, would show a great deal about the quake. In the last
one, only seven or eight years before, he had been told, almost every building, or at least
every brick building, had fallen down or sustained considerable damage--Andrew had
read all about it in his voracious way. Since it was unsafe to go back in the house for
more than a moment, they decided to pull on their clothes as quickly as they could and
then go see what they could see. Andrew was sure that this earthquake, like the one seven
years earlier, was a local one--important to Mare Island, and perhaps Vallejo and Benicia,
but not much in the larger scheme of things. Naturally, he first checked on the
observatory. The telescope was fine--it did not seem to have moved at all. Oddly, though,
two picture frames were flipped face to the wall, yet no books or papers had fallen. At
first this earthquake merely thrilled Andrew, as an example of what geological dynamics