‘Yeah! I gotta get up early! I can’t be waitin’ up all night for you to come home! Drinkin’! You’re too old for such goin’s-on, anyhow!’
Mrs. Rasmussen’s son-in-law, whom she referred to in her mind as Mortimer Snerd, had dipped his wick in the conversation. She rose to her feet with a slight lurch:
‘Listen, you! I pay my board an’ room an’ I’ll go an’ come when I please, see? An’ I’ll have a key o’ my own, that’s what! Why you lock up the dump is more’n I can see! You ain’t got nothin’ a burglar would want! The very idea o’ bargin’ into Mrs. Feeley’s home like this! It’s a insult! That’s what it is! I’ll go where I please an’ when I please with anybody I please an’ drink what I please, an’ there ain’t nobody can stop me…Now git, you’—Mrs. Rasmussen wracked her brains for something bad enough to call him and came up with—‘you Vegetarian!’
Elmer and his wife were completely taken aback by this unheard-of display of bravery. The worm had never turned before! They backed hastily out the door, and once safely outside the ill-used couple shouted, ‘You’ll be sorry for this, Maw!’
Years of association with Mrs. Feeley had provided Mrs. Rasmussen with an apt rejoinder for just such an occasion. She strolled casually to the door and shouted:
‘Up your bucket!’
‘Good for you!’ cried Mrs. Feeley, clapping her on the back. ‘I been waitin’ six years to hear you say that! Come on, ladies! Let’s make a night of it!’
Miss Tinkham was feeling a bit tottery, not being used to such orgies, but she was having a gorgeous time.
‘Asserting your independence like that was just the thing to do, Mrs. Rasmussen! Makes me realize how fortunate one is to be independent of all kinds of relatives! I have so little in actual money, but I am free, free as the birds of the air! One day a feast and the next ten a famine! But I like it that way! Keeps me from becoming smug and self-satisfied! How do we know how long we’ll be here? Friendship and love! That’s what counts: friendship and understanding hearts! Ladies, I may not have a roof over my head tomorrow, but right now I am going down to the corner for a dozen more cold beers!’
Miss Tinkham was a firm believer in the Eastern poet who advocated the policy of take the cash and let the credit go. After all, a beer in hand…Dear me, what am I saying? She was groggy but happy. When she tried to rise from her chair, her legs buckled under her like limp macaroni. There she sat, crumpled up in a heap on the floor! Her voice seemed to belong to someone else a long way off and her lips seemed to be covered with fuzz of some sort. Her nose was numb. She could see Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen leaning over her, but they were way out of focus. She peered up at them as from the bottom of a well. What on earth could be making her lips so stiff when she tried to speak?
‘Ladies,’ she whispered thickly, ‘the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,’ and sank into oblivion.
‘Well, blow me down an’ call me Shorty!’ said Mrs. Feeley. ‘She’s crapped out!’
‘An’ them ain’t empty words!’ Mrs. Rasmussen replied. ‘You get hold o’ her legs an’ I’ll get her under the arms an’ we’ll see if we can get her on the bed. Let her sleep it off!’
‘Don’t it beat all sixty?’ Mrs. Feeley chuckled. ‘Got a brannigan on for herself!’
The other hardened sinner grinned
‘She’s sure a good sport, though!’
‘Her wantin’ to go get some more beer! Poor soul! Down to her last buck! I’m fair worried for what’s to become of her.’
Mrs. Feeley was back at her beer and Mrs. Rasmussen joined her after straightening the pillows under Miss Tinkham’s head.
‘What you gonna do if they call your bluff?’ Mrs. Feeley referred to Mrs. Rasmussen’s daughter and son-in-law.
‘I dunno. Can’t do much on a thirty-dollar-a-month pension. Not with the rents so high. If me an’ another woman could go in together it wouldn’t be so bad. The rest o’ the stuff ain’t so high with me knowin’ how to cut corners: it’s the rent that ruins a body!’
Mrs. Feeley looked about her appraisingly.
‘This ain’t fine or anythin’, but it’s big an’ we get along good together. What would you say to comin’ in here with me?’ Mrs. Rasmussen was flabbergasted. She never expected anything like this.
‘Why, I couldn’t be intrudin’ an’ destroyin’ the privacy o’ your home, Mrs. Feeley! Don’t think I wouldn’t like it, but…Gosh, do you really mean it?’
‘Did you ever know me to say any thin’ I didn’t mean?’ Mrs. Rasmussen couldn’t say that she had.
‘It just come to me all at once: there you are spendin’ good money on rent an’ what do you get out o’ it? Can you have a friend in? Can you blow the suds off a couple if you feel like it?’ Mrs. Feeley’s questions were purely rhetorical. ‘No, indeed! All you get is nosy people takin’ your money! This house is forty-four foot square, an’ if you want, I’ll put you up a partition an’ make you as neat a little bedroom as you’d ever want to see! I’m thinkin’ o’ buildin’ a guest room anyway. My property’s clear. I don’t have to charge you no high rent. Long as I pay my taxes, can’t nobody ever take the roof from over our heads! I got kerosene lamps in case they ever shut off the lights, an’ we can always cook on the wood stove if we can’t pay the gas bill; but come hell or high water, them taxes gets paid!’ Mrs. Feeley got up and fished under the bed a minute and came up with a glass gallon jug containing an assortment of coins and bills.
‘That’s the tax money! I don’t nick into that for nothin’! Not even beer! The lawyer feller oughta be around soon to collect ’em. He handles all my business for me. So you can see I’m independent: I can help a friend out if I feel like it! Well, whadda you say?’
‘Gee, if you’ll have me, I’ll be tickled to live here! ’Course, I got my own bedroom suit I brought with me from the Old Country. I’ll have to take it an’ my table with the chromium legs. That’s the last thing Mister ever bought me.’
‘Sure! Bring it all!’ said Mrs. Feeley jovially.
‘I could cook some, maybe?’ Mrs. Rasmussen’s amberish eyes began to glow at the thought of the elegant lentil soup she would make with rings of frankfurter and dill pickle floating in it. It was one of the dishes she loved, and Elmer would not have it in the house.
‘Say, I’m crazy like a fox! Why do you think I was urgin’ you so hard to move in?’ Mrs. Feeley asked gaily. ‘I’m more the outdoor type, myself. The yard’s gone to hell lately, an’ I gotta help Old Timer take inventory. It’ll take a big load off my hands havin’ you to cook! Besides, you’re a lots better cook than me!’
‘An’ look how we can cut the ’spense!’ continued the ever-practical Rasmussen. ‘I know how to stretch the hide right off them buffalo nickels. Tomorrow mornin’ my check comes, an’ soon’s I get it, I’ll pack right up. Won’t they holler, though?’ She was thinking of her daughter.
‘Y’ain’t scared?’ Mrs. Feeley asked.
‘No, I ain’t! They can’t hold my stuff an’ I got the right to move where I please. The heck with them, I say.’
Mrs. Feeley said that called for another beer.
‘United we stand!’ she cried, lifting her glass to her house-mate-to-be. ‘In God we trust! I’m gonna take a little nap, or bust!’ And she crawled over the inert figure of Miss Tinkham, politely leaving the outside edge of the bed for Mrs. Rasmussen.
F
OR
some reason, the three occupants of the brass bed woke at about the same time. Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen were in fine fettle. Not so Miss Tinkham. It took her several minutes to figure out why she was where she was, and how it happened that she had gone to bed with her clothes on. Then she made her great mistake: she raised her head off the pillow too suddenly and tried to look round the room.
‘Oh,’ she moaned, ‘I haven’t felt like this since I went to Nova Scotia on the boat!’
‘Hangover, huh?’ Mrs. Feeley chuckled wickedly. ‘Well, that’s easy cured! What you need is a hair outa the tail o’ the dog that bit you!’
Ugh! thought Miss Tinkham. Why talk about dog hairs at a time like this?
Mrs. Feeley was back with a glass of icy-cold in her hand. Years of experience had taught her always to leave a cold one for the next morning.
‘Now drink this right down!’ she ordered. ‘Don’t sip it! Just take it right down in one gulp an’ you’ll be right as rain!’
Miss Tinkham shuddered. The smell was not quite so enticing as it had been the night before. She looked at Mrs. Feeley imploringly.
‘Don’t you think perhaps just a mouthful of that coffee Mrs. Rasmussen is making would be better?’ she pleaded.
‘Not on your life! This is the stuff to cure your jitters. Take it down while it’s good an’ cold. This’ll make them little men crawl right back in the bottle! Come on, now: down the hatch!’
Socrates drinking the hemlock wasn’t a patch on Miss Tinkham drinking her pick-me-up. Miraculously, she felt better almost as soon as she set down the empty glass.
‘There! Didn’t I tell you?’ Mrs. Feeley gloated. ‘How you feelin’, Mrs. Rasmussen? I’m feelin’ right on, myself!’
Mrs. Rasmussen said she was feeling aces, too. She had already started drinking her coffee. When Miss Tinkham had been to the bathroom and washed her face, she sat down at the table and joined her companions.
‘You know, I really believe I am going to live,’ she announced solemnly.
The two habituées chuckled.
Mrs. Rasmussen was drinking her coffee by holding a lump of sugar daintily between her teeth and sucking the coffee up through it. Mrs. Feeley had poured hers into a saucer and was blowing noisily upon it. Now that she was feeling better, Miss Tinkham could survey the scene with a less jaundiced eye: rather a large night, if memory served.
‘So I stayed out all night! What will my landlady say? I’ll have an awful time explaining this! She is sure to think it was a romantic episode…a rendezvous of some sort!’ She sobered up suddenly with the thought that she had to find a new place to live by tonight.
Her companions didn’t know what a rondy-voo was, but it had a nice wicked sound.
‘I do wish I had brought my astrological chart with me’—Miss Tinkham continued to think aloud. ‘It might give me a hint or two about where to find a room. I just can’t seem to get along without it; it’s such a precious guide to me!’ Not being able to consult her horoscope, she looked into the palm of her hand for advice.
‘Can you tell fortunes?’ queried Mrs. Rasmussen eagerly, shoving out her hand, palm up.
‘A little,’ admitted Miss Tinkham modestly. ‘Of course, astrology is my real field.’
She gazed with professional intentness into Mrs. Rasmussen’s hand.
‘I see domestic troubles ahead for you.’
Mrs. Feeley and Mrs. Rasmussen looked at each other and giggled.
‘But do not be dismayed: I see a decided change for the better in your hand. Have you ever become interested in the doctrines of the Swedenborgians?’
‘No,’ replied Mrs. Rasmussen. ‘I’m Danish, myself!’
‘Do mine now!’ chirped Mrs. Feeley before Miss Tinkham could straighten Mrs. Rasmussen out.
Miss Tinkham took the proffered paw and suddenly her manner changed to one of grave concern:
‘My dear Mrs. Feeley, you are about to hear a distressing piece of news. Most disturbing! You have been the victim of a deception! The lines indicate that it was perpetrated by a man. Do you know anyone who would wish you ill? Play you a scurvy trick?’
‘Not if I could get my hands on him, I don’t! Unless it was that feller that come around threatenin’ to have me bound over if I didn’t fix me some blackout curtains!’
‘Couldn’t be him, ’cause that’s the law, all right!’ Mrs. Rasmussen put in. ‘Must be somebody else.’
‘Well, I don’t take much stock in that crapiola anyway,’ said Mrs. Feeley, settling the matter once and for all. ‘When he shows up, I’ll know how to handle him! But say! Here we sit on our duff an’ time’s a-wastin’! Remember what the madam told the girls: “Get busy, ladies; the piano in the parlor ain’t paid for!”’
She set the example by bustling off to the sink with the cups and saucers, which she washed and dried by the simple process of holding them under the running water and then turning them upside down on the drainboard.
Mrs. Rasmussen emerged from the bathroom with her sausages freshly combed. Miss Tinkham rescued her hat from the top of the piano and prepared to depart.
‘Thanks for the lovely party and for taking care of me so well. I must go now and see what I can do about a room. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit to find my things out in the road! That woman! Really, she’s quite impossible!’
‘Well, you ain’t alone no more,’ said Mrs. Feeley warmly. ‘You got friends now! You know where to come if things gets too tough. Mr. Feeley always said I had a heart like a poorhouse blanket: a warm side for everybody. An’ the Ark here’s like them old Fords: always room for one more!’
Miss Tinkham put her lanky arms around Mrs. Feeley and kissed her on both cheeks:
‘Dear lady, your lovely spirit shines like a good deed in a naughty world! That’s Shakespeare. I don’t know when I’ve met such regal people! Simply regal!’ she cried. ‘I shall try not to impose, but you know these ups and downs! Now I must away, I truly must!’ And she was gone, leaving an aura of sentiment and good-fellowship in her wake.
‘She’s a lovely woman, ain’t she?’ Mrs. Rasmussen mused.
‘She sure is!’ Mrs. Feeley answered fervently. ‘Gawd! Here we sit an’ you gotta go get your stuff! An’ I gotta build you a room! Get goin’! Tell you what: in about a hour should me an’ Old-Timer come with the truck an’ move you?’