Ten North Frederick (38 page)

In re-familiarizing himself with the firm's affairs he was made to realize the amount of work Joe had undertaken, the money he had made for the firm, the money he had given to war campaigns, and the time he had put in in the militia and in investigating distress cases for the Red Cross and the Patriotic League. But the mere mention of these activities seemed to fill Joe with disgust, and Arthur refrained from mentioning them in Joe's presence. “I don't see how one man could have done so much,” he said to Edith. “Joe did the work of four men.”

“Yes, he did,” said Edith. “But it will never make up for his not being in the Army.”

“Do you blame
me
, Edith?” said Arthur.

“Tossing a coin wasn't the way it should have been done. No, I don't blame you, Arthur, but I wish you had both agreed that keeping the firm going was not as important as it seemed. It will take a long time before Joe feels right about the war, maybe forever.”

“He did more than I did. I mean that.”

“I don't doubt you for a minute. But you
were
in uniform, and you came back with those little striped ribbons on your coat.”

“Well, they're not on my coat now, Edith.”

“No, that's true,” said Edith. “I have a confession to make. I tried to coax Joe to give up the law and
join
the Army, but he insisted that you would have kept your end of the bargain if you'd lost. I insisted that you'd do no such thing. And you wouldn't have, would you, Arthur?”

“No, I probably wouldn't,” said Arthur.

“At least you admit it,” said Edith.

Arthur smiled. “Edith, for the first time in our lives I'm beginning to realize that you don't like me. I've been very stupid.”

“Oh, I don't believe you ever cared what I thought, whether I liked you or disliked you. All I ask now, Arthur, is that occasionally you remind yourself that Rose could be in my position and you could be in Joe's. You served your country in the Army, but it was all decided by a toss of a coin.”

“I'll do exactly as you wish. It happens to be what I'd have done anyway.”

“Very well, then the subject is closed,” said Edith.

“Good. Now there's a subject I would like to bring up, if you don't mind.”

“Please do.”

“Are you in favor of Joe's going into politics?”

“Whether I'm in favor of it or not, his war record is against him, or would be if his opponent had been in the Army.”

“I guess the subject isn't closed after all,” said Arthur.

“Well, we have to face facts,” said Edith. “And of course
you're
not unhappy.
You
don't want to see Joe in politics.”

“No, you're damn right I don't,” said Arthur.

“You can be emphatic without talking like a soldier. You never used to swear in my presence.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“
If
Joe should enter politics, I do think you ought to put aside your personal preferences in the matter, and do for him what he did for you while you were in Paris. That is, do all you can to support him and encourage him and assist him. Joe has all the money he'll ever need—”

“Not quite. He needs three million dollars so that he can leave a million each to you and the children.”

“Oh, so you know that? Well, I'd rather have him feel happy in whatever he's doing than make a lot more money for the children and me. And the day may come when he does decide to do more in the field of public affairs, for better government and the good of the party.”

“Mike Slattery,” said Arthur.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Edith, we'd better not talk any more.”

“Whatever you say,” said Edith.

“Whatever I say will be used against me.”

“Very clever tonight, aren't we?”

 • • • 

For most married couples who are parents, there comes a Children's Era. It commences with the parents' ceasing to regard the children as pets, toys, total dependents. There is no fixed age when the change occurs; the change in parent and child is too subtle for that. But in retrospect the parent sometimes can fix the time by recalling an incident, by a recognizable change in attitude of parent toward child, or of child toward parent.

In
1920
Ann Chapin reached the age of nine, and her small brother became five. Ann had her own room, she was at Miss Holton's School, she had a Shetland pony which she drove in a governess cart, on Saturdays she rode her mother's gelding, and on Saturday afternoons she attended dancing school, which she hated because it was full of girls and half full of boys who likewise hated it because it was full of girls. She fought boys with her fists and with her fingernails and teeth, but she liked to sit in the garage with Harry while he repaired and polished the new, the Chapins' second, Pierce-Arrow. She helped Harry: when he was washing the car he would tell her to turn off the hose, turn on the hose, bring him the sponge, hang up the chamois. When he finished he would take off his rubber boots and put on his old sneakers (which had belonged to her father) and they would go to the kitchen for a glass of homemade root beer. Marian would always protest that the root beer would spoil Ann's supper, but Harry would remind her that root beer contained herbs, and herbs were good for a person. Better for a person, Marian would say, than the smoke from Harry's pipe. “But Father smokes a pipe,” Ann would say. “But he puts tobacco in it,” Marian would say. “Not old hunks of rubber boots.”

She liked the pungency of the garage, with its mixture of motorcar and horse smells, and the lingering sweetness and cleanliness of the kitchen and even the dankness and cleanness of the laundry, with its stationary tubs and inside wash-lines. When Harry was out she would watch Marian at her ironing or her baking or cleaning a chicken, and she liked Marian, but being with Marian was not the fun that being with Harry was. When she had a wound she would show it to Harry, when she needed money she would go to Harry.

When she needed affection demonstrated, she would go to her father, and she would go to him when she wanted to know the meaning of a word, or for permission to do something unusual, or for an appeal from severe punishment. It was not lost on her, even before she was nine, that her father reserved for her alone any outward demonstrations of affection. There was almost always room made for her on his lap; and in his den, at his desk, he would always break his concentration on a book or a letter when she entered and spoke. She had been told not to sit on her mother's lap, an order that was not satisfactorily explained to her during the time of Edith's second pregnancy, a time during which her mother also had stopped carrying her upstairs to bed or lifting her into her crib. Edith forgot to resume the tender acts after the baby was born, and the oversight cost Edith the opportunities for affectionate gestures that Joe made automatically. Thus inevitably home to Ann meant her father first, then her mother and Harry and Marian, then her brother.

“I don't think you ought to spend so much time in the garage and the kitchen,” said Edith, during Ann's ninth year.

“Harry likes me to,” said Ann.

“I wouldn't be so sure about that,” said Edith. “You must get in their way.”

“No I don't, Mother. I help Harry
and
Marian.”

“I'm afraid you keep them from doing their work, and they're too polite to say so,” said Edith.

Ann stayed out of the kitchen and the garage for a week. She spoke to Harry and Marian only when spoken to, and replied to them without looking at them. Then Harry, who was beginning to miss her visits, said to her: “Where you been keeping yourself?”

“I don't know.”

“You don't know? Well, you better give that pony some exercise or she'll be sick.”

“Why?”

“Because it isn't good for her to be standing in the stall without any exercise, that's why.”

“I've been forbidden.”

“You've been forbidden? Forbidden to what? Your father'd rather sell the pony than have her just stand there and founder. She'll get the bloat.”

“My mother said I get in you and Marian's way.”

Harry looked at his wife, who nodded and made a face. “Ah, you don't get in our way,” said Marian. “We're only too glad to have you.”

“That's not what my mother said,” said Ann.

The situation was relieved by a conversation between Harry and Joe and a further conversation between Joe and Edith.

“Do you want her to grow up saying
ain't?
And I've heard her say worse,” said Edith.

“What worse?”

“The word beginning with S. You know where she got that.”

“I'm pretty sure I know where she
didn't
get it, Edith. Harry wouldn't use those words in front of a child.”

“She heard it somewhere and that's the logical place. Besides, it isn't only the nasty words. It's
ain't
, and
me and him
, and bad grammar. And another thing.”

“What?”

“Talking about Captain's big peter.”

Joe laughed.

“I don't think it's funny, to have a nine-year-old child discussing a horse's private parts. And you know where she got the word
peter
. From Harry, of course.”

“Well, it could have been worse,” said Joe. “I'm glad Harry showed restraint.”

“You seem to think the whole thing's funny. She said Captain's peter nearly touches the ground.”

“Well, how old were you when you first rode a horse? About the same age. And you can't spend much time around them without noticing certain things. Harry worships Ann, worships her. You can be damn sure that no harm is going to come to her if Harry can help it.”

“No, of course not. Except that she'll grow up talking like a stable-boy.”

“You're not being fair to Harry, Edith. Decidedly unfair, in my opinion. And while I don't as a rule like to interfere, this time I think there's more to be lost than gained by forbidding Ann to visit the stable.”

“Very well. I gave the order, if you wish to countermand it,” said Edith.

“Couldn't you just say to her, something to the effect that she's been such a good girl lately, you've decided she could go to the stable again.”

“I couldn't say
that
. She hasn't been such a good girl lately.”

“Well, you know why,” said Joe.

“Yes, I know why. She's been sulking because she was told to stay out of the garage. Or stable, which you prefer. She's been misbehaving, refusing to do her homework, refusing to touch her food. Very naughty. And you propose to have me tell her that as a reward for being naughty, she can do as she pleases. I'm very sorry, my dear, but I refuse to do it. If you want to spoil her, that's on your conscience. That's for you to decide. But in the future, perhaps you'd like to take over the whole responsibility. Oh, I'll relinquish it. But let me remind you that the time isn't far off when she'll need her mother more than her father.”

“This isn't the crisis you're making it out to be,” said Joe. “I said nothing about countermanding, or relieving you of your authority. However, when I think you're being overzealous—”

“Overzealous? Hmm.”

“I reserve the right to intervene,” said Joe. “I'm going to tell Ann that what we meant was that we were afraid she was interfering with Harry's work, but that Harry said she wasn't, so . . .”

“So?”

“Well, she could go to the stable, but perhaps not as
often
.”

“Proving exactly nothing except that I was wrong, and she won't forget that.”

“Well, I think you exaggerate that part of it. But that's what I'm going to do.”

Joe followed out his plan and Ann's visits to the stable-garage were resumed. The episode—it was more than an incident—took place over a period of about a year, from Edith's ruling, through the restoration of Ann's visiting privileges, and into Ann's tenth year. The episode concluded with an unhappy occurrence.

Joe Junior—who was known in the family as Joby, a name which developed from the child's attempt to speak his full name—liked to do everything his sister could do. He played with her dolls, he imitated her speech, he screamed when he was kept out of her parties, and he attempted to achieve the same relationship with his father that his sister enjoyed. If he saw Ann sitting on her father's lap, he would climb on the remaining space and try to play the same games with Joe. The maneuvers made the father and the daughter uncomfortable, but they would try to make room for the boy. His mother would invite him to sit on her lap, and he would do so, but his attention remained on his sister and his father, so that Edith was made to feel excluded from the family play, and she ceased to try to participate. Which, in turn, left Joby out of it all.

Among his imitative activities was his following Ann to the garage, and he would try to beat her to the faucet when Harry told her to turn off the hose; to have the chamois in his hand for the moment when Harry would call for it. Joby was quick in body and mind and he sometimes annoyed his sister by anticipating Harry's commands. On one occasion Ann lost patience with him and turned the hose on him. She was punished, this time by her father, who ruled that she could not go to the stable for a week. She punished Joby by keeping him out of her room and taking away her dolls, privileges which were restored when she was allowed to go back to the garage.

But Harry had no warmth of feeling for the boy. “I can't get to like the kid,” he told Marian. “I don't know why.”

“He's a miserable little lad, you ought to try,” said Marian.

“Miserable? What's miserable about him?”

“You don't see it, but I do,” said Marian. “
She
don't know how to give him affection—”