Raising Demons (25 page)

We passed Artie in his green Giant cap and we said it had been a fine game, he had played wonderfully well, and he laughed and said tolerantly, “Can't win 'em all, you know.” When we got back to our house I put Barry into his bed while Dot put on the kettle for a nice cup of tea. We washed our faces and took off our shoes, and finally Dot said hesitantly that she certainly hoped that Marian wasn't really offended with us.

“Well, of course she takes this kind of thing terribly hard,” I said.

“I was just thinking,” Dot said after a minute, “we ought to plan a kind of victory party for the Braves at the end of the season.”

“A hot-dog roast, maybe?” I suggested.

“Well,” Dot said, “I
did
hear the boys talking one day. They said they were going to take some time this summer and clean out your barn, and set up a record player in there and put in a stock of records and have some dances.”

“You mean . . .” I faltered. “With
girls
?”

Dot nodded.

“Oh,” I said.

When our husbands came home two hours later we were talking about old high school dances and the time we went out with those boys from Princeton. Our husbands reported that the Red Sox had beaten the Dodgers in the second game and were tied for first place with the Braves. Jannie and Sally came idling home, and finally Laurie and Billy stopped in, briefly, to change their clothes. There was a pickup game down in Murphy's lot, they explained, and they were going to play some baseball.

That summer was one of the hottest we had ever had, and I got sunburned sitting on the hill over third base. The day Laurie pitched a no-hit shut-out I thought I had sunstroke. In the middle of the fifth inning, when people began murmuring in the bleachers, and counting every strike, I went up over the top of the hill and down the other side to where there was a tree and some grass and I sat there; I could not see the ball field, but I could hear the umpire's calls and, then, the excitement rising. I sat in the shade and figured out that there were only seventeen more days before school started. Sally and Jannie were going to need new winter coats; a year from now I would be getting Barry ready for kindergarten. The first winter we were in our new house, when Laurie used to go sledding on this hill, he could stand just about where I was sitting now, and see our back porch, and I used to signal him that it was time to come home by hanging a dish towel over the porch rail; I could not see the back porch now because the trees were still thick. In another few weeks, I thought, the leaves would be coming down again. School, birthdays, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the long spring days, and then another summer. I could hear cheering from the ball field. The years go by so quickly, I thought, rising; he used to be so small.

The last few days of summer go faster, though, than any other time of year. In honor of Sally's entrance into second grade, and Jannie's triumphant arrival at fifth grade, I sat them down one evening and, with my husband's help and much advice and laughter from Laurie and Barry, cut their hair short. Both girls, enchanted with their light heads, admiring each other, feeling incredulously at the cut ends, began to cry when they saw their own hair which I carefully put away in a package in my dresser. At that time Laurie was wearing his hair long, and cultivated into a careful wave over his forehead, by means of the adhesive assistance of several evil-smelling compounds. “Hello, little girl,” Sally said repeatedly to Laurie, and, to Jannie, “Hello, little boy.” Barry asked for a set of cowboy holsters for his approaching fourth birthday. Dikidiki, old and shabby but still perceptibly blue, slept now in a small bed made for him by Laurie, with a pillow sewed by Jannie and a coverlet decorated with crayon pictures by Sally. Dikidiki slept almost all the time, day and night, until something troubled Barry, or angered him, and then he would go to his room and get Dikidiki and they would retreat together to the far corner of the guest room and sit behind the window curtain. Sally and Jannie were allowed to buy one book a week each, from their allowances, and Laurie one popular tune arranged for the trumpet.

Toby, who was finding the summers hotter than they used to be when he was a puppy, suffered a good deal, walking back and forth to the ball field after Laurie. In addition to a certain amount of stiffness in his old joints, a malady which my husband and I regarded with ready sympathy after a summer of sitting on the car robe on a grassy hill over the ball field, his fear of thunderstorms, always acute, increased with advancing age. He could sense thunder long before it was audible to the rest of us, and all that summer the first intimation that the ball game might be rained out was Toby, heading home in a black streak.

Yain had been rudely jolted out of his fool's paradise by finding that there was another cat in the world, after all; one day Jannie came home from the ball field with a tiny, frightened black kitten which had been wandering pathetically around the refreshment stand. Could we keep it, she wanted to know, it would be her cat and she would promise to take care of it all by herself and no one else wanted it and it would
die
and if she promised to take care of it could she keep it for her very own? I said that I supposed it would be all right because our quarantine on cats was nearly ended. After a couple of days of heavy cream and fresh meat and raw eggs beaten in milk, and regular brushing with Jannie's doll hairbrush, the little kitten was sleek and shining, and wholly unafraid of Yain, who loathed him. Jannie named the kitten Stardust, but the rest of us called him Gato.

“You see,” Laurie explained to Jannie, “Stardust is all right for a name for
people
and stuff, but a cat should have a decent name.”

“I used to have a cat named Creampuff,” I said defensively.

“I bet you did, too, kid,” Laurie said. “And you never learned to ice skate, or to sled.”

“I
couldn't
,” I said. “There wasn't any
snow.
” I thought, staring out the kitchen window reminiscently, “The first snowsuit I ever saw was the one Laurie had when he was a baby. I used to read about snow, and I saw pictures of it, but until I was grown up and came to live in the East I couldn't really imagine what it was like.” Looking out at the lawn, I thought of the drifts piling up against the hedge, and the wind whipping past the back door, and the icy sidewalks, and I shivered. “I didn't know when I was well off,” I said.

Jannie prompted me, softly. “And you used to live next door to a candy factory. . . .”

“To a man who
owned
a candy factory. Mr. Thompson. And just before Christmas every year he would take my brother and me to visit his candy factory.”

“—and he would tell you to eat all you wanted—” Jannie went on.

“And on the first floor,” Laurie came in, “were the people making little hard Christmas candies, and ribbon candy, and candy canes, and you and your brother always tried to remember not to take a candy cane because they lasted so long you had to leave out some other things—”

“And on the second floor they were making caramels, with big pots boiling and if you took a caramel you had to keep chewing on it and you missed the fudge—” Jannie said.

“And on the third floor they were making little mints, peppermint and lemon and orange and cinnamon, and if you took a cinnamon one it was so peppery you couldn't taste anything for a long time—” Laurie continued.

“And on the
top
floor,” Jannie said, “were the ladies dipping chocolates, and when you got way up there you were so full of candy canes and cinnamon mints and caramels you couldn't eat any chocolates.”

“But he always gave us a little box to take home with us,” I said. “We used to put the little boxes under the Christmas tree. He was very nice, Mr. Thompson.”

“Everything was much nicer in the olden days,” Jannie said.

Sally said, “Uncle Louis says that when
he
was a little boy they had to chase him to school with a stick.”

“They're going to have to chase
me
, boy,” Laurie said grimly. “Only two weeks from Tuesday. Golly.”

“Uncle Louis said when someone gives you a hamburger it isn't polite to look inside to see if they put a two-inch salute firecracker in, and so Uncle Louis didn't, but Mr. Feeley already had, and Uncle Louis got relish in his hair when it blew up.”

“You know what I think?” Laurie said, coming to look out the window with me, “I think next summer maybe I'll get a job, like down at Mike's delivering groceries. I bet I could earn plenty that way, and then someday when I had enough I could get a little sports car. Boy,” he said. “Dig me driving a red and white M.G. to school.”

 • • • 

By the Saturday before Labor Day a decided atmosphere of cool restraint had taken over our house, because on Thursday my husband had received a letter from an old school friend of his named Sylvia, saying that she and another girl were driving through New England on a vacation and would just
adore
stopping by for the weekend to renew old friendships. My husband gave me the letter to read, and I held it very carefully by the edges and said that it was positively touching, the way he kept up with his old friends, and did Sylvia always use pale lavender paper with this kind of rosy ink and what was that I smelled—perfume? My husband said Sylvia was a grand girl. I said I was sure of it. My husband said Sylvia had always been one of the nicest people he knew. I said I hadn't a doubt. My husband said that he was positive that I was going to love Sylvia on sight. I opened my mouth to speak but stopped myself in time.

My husband laughed self-consciously. “I remember,” he said, and then his voice trailed off and he laughed again.

“Yes?” I asked politely.

“Nothing,” he said.

I set the letter down tenderly in the center of his desk and said well, I guessed I had better get along to the breakfast dishes and he said that reminded him. “Sylvia,” he said. “She's always so neat.
You
know. Nail polish, and things like that.”

I put my hands in back of me and said yes, I understood.

“I would take it as a personal kindness if things looked a little better than usual this weekend when Sylvia comes. Sort of spruced up—maybe wash the children and stuff. Everything nice.” He gestured. “
You
know,” he said.

“By all means,” I said warmly. “I wouldn't for anything in the world have Sylvia see the house looking the way it usually does. I shall go at once and mend that broken board in the front steps.”

“What?” my husband said, but I closed the study door softly behind me, stood in the hall, and counted to a thousand. Then I stamped up to the guest room, where I swept the cobwebs off the ceiling as though I were pulling hair and completely wrecked what little nail polish I had opening the side guest room window so I could shake the mop out over the open study window just below. I took the guest room curtains down to wash and the curtain rod fell on my head. I scrubbed the bathroom floor and cleaned out the closet and washed down the hall woodwork and cleaned all the upstairs ashtrays and then I took a shower and came downstairs and made dinner. I was feeling very righteous and forgiving until my husband glanced down at his veal cutlet and asked absently if he had remembered to tell me that his friend Sylvia was a marvelous cook.

On Friday morning I vacuumed all the downstairs rooms and washed down more woodwork and did the kitchen curtains and scrubbed the kitchen floor and polished the copper bottoms on the saucepans and dusted the living room and washed the glass in the front door and cleaned off the top of my desk and carefully put my leaking fountain pen down on my husband's class notes. Then I put furniture polish on the dining room table and the two sideboards and washed the piano keys and cleaned all the downstairs ashtrays. I washed all the clock faces and the television screen. I arranged my husband's collection of canes in the front hall. I swept the front porch and the back porch and went out with a damp cloth and cleaned off the lawn chairs. I called the grocer and ordered two ducklings to roast for Saturday dinner and said I would take two dozen ears of corn if it was fresh picked. Then I took a shower and came downstairs and made dinner and remarked to my husband that we were having roast duckling for dinner on Saturday night and at first he looked pleased, then he said in a worried voice that lots of people didn't care for roast duckling and maybe I'd better make it rib-roast or something instead because he didn't want Sylvia to get a wrong impression.

On Saturday morning I woke up with my fists clenched and my teeth grinding and got out of bed telling myself that today I was not going to say an unnecessary word to anybody and I was going to smile all day long and I was going to keep my temper, keep my temper, keep my temper. I sang a careless little French song while I dressed myself and brushed my hair and then I let up the shade with a snap that was sure to wake my husband with a jolt. I stopped singing and nearly went back to bed, because it was raining outside. The last Saturday morning before school started, Labor Day weekend, summer's closing, and it was raining. Laurie was supposed to play baseball that afternoon. Jannie had engaged to walk down to the library with her friend Carole, where the two of them were permitted to check books in and out if their hands were clean. Sally had been invited to visit a neighbor's sandbox. I had thought to put Barry outdoors riding his bike while I finished up the housework. Laurie had his trumpet lesson on Saturday morning and this meant that I would have to drive him and trumpet there and back. For a minute I wondered whether I had left the guest room curtains out on the line, but of course I had.

“—Saturday?” my husband inquired drowsily.

“Saturday,” I confirmed, using no unnecessary words. “Rain.”

“Sylvia's coming.”

I kicked his slippers under the bed and started downstairs. Barry fell in behind me as I passed his doorway; he must have seen that it was raining, because he was carrying Dikidiki. Sally capered out of her room singing her song about Harf, Booney, and Ray, three giants whom I did not ordinarily find tiresome and revolting. Our guests were due about two o'clock. Sally and Barry had been washing paintbrushes in the clean bathroom.

Behind me on the stairs Barry was making plans. “Because today is his
birthday
, Dikidiki Bear, and we will have a party for him, and all the bears and rabbits and dolls and even Skunk will come.”