Authors: William March
He went into the coolness of the basement, remembering again the incident of the hose, and the rude things Mrs. Breedlove had said to him that day. He’d never got even with her for saying them things, but he would; just wait and see.…
Her garage door was open, and her car gone; she must be downtown somewhere spending money and gabbing. He bet she wasn’t eating no lunch wrapped up in a paper bag; he bet she was eating at one of them real nice places, throwing her weight around, and going gab, gab, gab. His eyes wandered about the littered room, and he saw a big, discarded scraper standing in one corner. He laughed suddenly in pleasant anticipation of what he was going to do, wheeled out the scraper, and abandoned it in front of Mrs. Breedlove’s garage. Then, as though that were not enough, he set his buckets nearby, and draped his mops over the scraper, to give an air of informal credibility to the affair. He surveyed the work he had done, and when his artistic conscience was satisfied, he went back to the basement, finished his lunch, and sat there chuckling in anticipated pleasure of what Mrs. Breedlove’s face was going to look like when she had to get out in the hot sun and move the obstruction before she could put her car up.
He had fixed up a makeshift bed for himself in the basement;
he had piled papers and excelsior in one corner, behind an old broken sofa, a place where none of the tenants could see him easily if they happened to peep inside; and often, when he was feeling like he did right now, he would slip in there and take himself a little snooze without nobody being no wiser. He smoothed out the old quilt he had put over the papers and excelsior, stretched out, sighed voluptuously, and let his mind wander. He wondered what that dizzy blonde did for her fun, with her husband out of town so much. He’d like to have her with him right now, if anybody asked him. He’d show her some tricks, all right. He was just the one to do it, the way he was feeling right now. And when he got through with that dumb blonde, she’d write a letter to her husband and tell him to not never come back. He turned on his side, watching a fly walk across the ceiling.
That dizzy blonde was a good-looking woman, all right—she made lots of them movie queens look sick; but she was too dumb for him. She was too soft and foolish-like. You could tame that one and break her down fast; you could have that one eating out of your hand, and begging you for it all the time. That one was too much like his wife.… But that mean little Rhoda was something else. You couldn’t put nothing over on that mean little girl. And when she grew up, she was going to be
something.
If a man tried to treat her sorry, just as likely as not she’d bounce a skillet off his head. He smiled with contentment, the voluptuousness of his fantasies flooding his senses, turned slowly on his bed, and was instantly asleep.
Mrs. Penmark sent Rhoda to the park to play, got out the material she’d selected for the child’s school dresses, and started on the first one. She had it cut out and the material basted when Mrs. Breedlove stopped at her apartment on her way upstairs. She was tired from her trip to town, and plainly she was angry about something. She accepted the glass of iced tea Christine
offered her, sipped it, and said, “I’m not going to endure Leroy another day. He gets more impossible all the time. If it weren’t for his poor wife and children, I’d—”
She broke off, shrugged, and said, “But why go over these things again? You know him as well as I do. I’m not even going to discuss the matter!”
But she did, of course, and in the completest detail. When she had finished, she was in an excellent humor once more, and laughing a little, tossing her head wildly, she said, “But why delude myself any more, dear Christine? I enjoy screaming at Leroy, and I’m sure he knows it. There’s a streak of fishwife in me, and Leroy is the only one I know who brings it out and ventilates it.”
She took off her hat, tossed it on the sofa, and said suddenly, “Rhoda’s locket! That’s what I really stopped by for, not to tell you about Leroy Jessup.”
She went on to explain that she’d taken the locket to Pageson’s since she considered them the best jewelers in town, and talked with old Mr. Pageson himself, whom she’d known a long time. Mr. Pageson had listened to what she said, had agreed to what she’d suggested; but he’d also said she couldn’t get the locket back for at least two weeks, if that soon, there being so much work in advance of hers. She had told Mr. Pageson in return that she’d really counted on getting the locket that same day, not two weeks later—in fact, she’d counted on getting it in about two hours at the outside; but Mr. Pageson had shaken his frail head and said it was entirely out of the question, a complete physical impossibility.
Christine smiled and said, “I can imagine what you said in reply to poor old Mr. Pageson.”
“Oh, I doubt it!” she said with delight. “I doubt if even you, who knows me so intimately, dear Christine, can guess how I handled the man this time!” She thrust out her massive, tubular
legs, and continued, “My approach was quite simple, and, if I do say so, inspired. I merely said in my most reasonable voice, ‘You mustn’t forget, dear Mr. Pageson, that I’m running the Community Chest again this year, and I can’t wait for the locket because I must hurry home and make out my estimate of the donations we expect from various individuals and businesses. I’m glad I made the trip to your store, anyway, for I had no idea your business was doing so
well.
I’d already put you down for a thousand dollars in my mind, but of course, knowing what I do now, I’ll be happy to revise the figure upward—oh, so definitely upward!’ ”
“Monica! Monica! Aren’t you ashamed of yourself?”
“Not at all!” screamed Mrs. Breedlove. “Not in the slightest, my dear Christine!… ‘I think about twenty-five
hundred
would be a fair donation from a going concern like this one,’ I said; but of course I winked at him when I said it. He got the point, all right, and he said, ‘You can put me down for any amount you like. I don’t have to pay it, you know. There’s no law that makes me contribute a penny to the Community Chest if I don’t want to.’ ”
Mrs. Breedlove put down her glass and touched her eyes with the hem of her handkerchief. “ ‘You think so, Mr. Pageson?’ I asked. ‘You really and truly think so?’ ”
“He said, ‘I not only think so, I know so!’ So then I had to tell him how we dealt with cases like his. We put them in our ‘Difficult Extractions’ folder, and then our volunteers really went to work. I told him, ‘First we send down a bevy of last year’s debutantes, girls who’ll do anything in the name of charity. They’ll be instructed to weep on your counter, and implore you to loosen up—preferably while the store is full of customers, of course. But if that doesn’t work, I’ll have to call in old Miss Minnie Pringle—an expert at imploring if I ever met one.’ And when I mentioned Miss Minnie, I knew I had him on the ropes, my dear.”
She broke off to add that since Christine had never had the pleasure of meeting Miss Pringle, she had something to look forward
to in the future. Miss Minnie had a voice as piercing as the sharpest knife, as powerful and monotonous as a foghorn; she had the sensitivity of a rhinoceros, the tenacity of a snapping turtle. Minnie was actually the most terrifying old battle-ax in town, even worse than Monica herself.…
“I knew I had old Mr. Pageson on the run,” she continued; “but to throw me off, he said, ‘Minnie Pringle won’t bother me at all. I rather like the woman. We’ll be glad to have her in the store any time.’ ”
“So I reminded him that Minnie’s approach would be to stand just inside his front door and remind him, and of course his customers, too, that although he had this flourishing business, this little gold mine of wealth, he owed it not to his own efforts, but to the tolerance of One On High. One On High had given him this tidy, prospering business; but One On High was equally prepared to smite him with lightning and blast him with thunder, to take it all away from him, in fact, if he didn’t accept his civic responsibilities and give the Community Chest its cut.”
“Would you have done it?” asked Christine in astonishment.
“Of course not, my dear!” said Mrs. Breedlove. “If I did a thing like that, Emory would drown me in the bathtub. I had no idea of doing it. I was only kidding poor Mr. Pageson, but he wasn’t sure I was any more than you were. You see, I have a reputation of being an eccentric—a great advantage in dealing with others, I assure you. People are afraid of eccentrics; they can never be sure which way they’ll jump, or what they’ll do next.
“So, to end my tiresome story,” said Mrs. Breedlove, “I walked out of the store, saying over my shoulder, ‘I’ve got some errands, but I’ll be back at twelve-thirty on the dot. I have every confidence that the locket will be ready at that time.’ ”
Christine laughed and said, “Was the locket ready for you then?”
“Oh, my dear!” said Mrs. Breedlove. “Oh, my dear but naïve
little Christine! Of course it was ready!” She opened her pocketbook and took out the locket. It had been cleaned. The clasp had been fixed. The stones had been changed. The letters R. H. P. were beautifully intertwined on the back. She gave the locket to Mrs. Penmark, and continued to talk in a delighted voice. After she’d got things her own way, her conscience troubled her for the way she’d blackmailed dear Mr. Pageson; then she remembered he liked coconut pies better than anything. But he was most particular about his coconut pies: he liked them made from fresh coconut, not from that tasteless, shriveled-up stuff that came in boxes. He liked the milk of the coconut mixed in with the custard, with little morsels of fresh coconut distributed through the pie just before baking. He liked grated coconut on top of the pie, and the pie then browned in a quick, hot oven. He had told her all this a few years ago, and how Mrs. Pageson, before she died, had fixed pies for him exactly the way he liked them; but he’d not had a really good one since, for nobody in this generation of shortcuts and easy solutions would go to all that trouble.
Mrs. Breedlove opened her shopping bag and took out a big, shaggy coconut. “I stopped off at Demetrios the fruitman’s,” she said, “and picked out the nicest one he had. I’m going upstairs in a minute and make Mr. Pageson, that dear man, a coconut pie the way he likes them. He may not know it, but it will be far better than anything his wife ever made, because his wife, in spite of everything he says, was an indifferent cook, at best. Really, it will be the best pie he ever ate. I make the best pastry in town and I know it.”
When Mrs. Breedlove had gone, Christine felt again the unhappiness she’d known earlier in the day. That evening, after dinner, she said to Rhoda, “I’ve been thinking of the medal all day. I’m going to return it to Mrs. Daigle, and I’m going to ask her forgiveness for your having stolen it.”
“I didn’t steal the medal, Mother. How can you say anything like that? Claude sold me the medal like I told you.”
“I don’t know how you got the medal,” said Christine wearily. “But I know you didn’t get it the way you said you did. But even if you did rent it from Claude, it was dishonest to keep it afterward.”
The child looked at her steadily, her eyes filled with cold, shrewd calculation, a calculation she no longer tried to hide from her mother, since already Christine knew so much. “It’s not Mrs. Daigle’s medal,” she said. “Mrs. Daigle didn’t win it. It belongs to me more than it does to her.”
Christine did not answer the child’s argument. She merely said, “I won’t be gone very long. I want you to stay here in the apartment until I get back. Do you understand?”
At first, she had considered taking the child with her, to give her an object lesson in the sorrows of others, but she decided against it as both embarrassing and useless, and, putting the medal in her purse, she went alone, telling nobody of her intention. Mr. Daigle received her at the door, but hesitantly now. There was a tense uneasiness about him, and he wavered in his intentions for a time, a time long enough for Mrs. Penmark to feel, and wonder about; and then, pressing his hands together, he asked her into the living-room. Abruptly he wheeled and went to tell his wife of her presence, and at once Christine heard Mrs. Daigle’s metallic, hysterical voice in the room across the hall. “Why is she coming here again?” she said. “Did you think to ask her? Hasn’t she caused us enough heart-break and sorrow without her coming here again to gloat over us? She came here to remind me that her child is well and happy, and that mine—” Her voice rose almost to a wail, and her husband said in a nervous voice, “Please, Hortense! Please! She can hear you.”
“Then let her hear me!” said Mrs. Daigle. “Let her hear me! What difference does it make?” Then, in a softer voice, she went on wearily. “Tell her to go away. Tell her we don’t care to see her, and she must go back home at once.”
Mr. Daigle came back into the room. He said apologetically, “Hortense isn’t herself these days. Perhaps you can understand. She resents anybody who’s happier than she is—and God alone knows that’s everybody who lives. She’s been very unreasonable since Claude’s death, and she’s under a doctor’s care. He came this afternoon again.” Then, lowering his voice even more, he added, “We’re worried about her.”
Mrs. Penmark pressed his hand in understanding and moved toward the door, but at that moment Mrs. Daigle burst into the room. Her eyes were red and swollen, her hair hung in damp strings around her face, which seemed puffy and inflamed, as though she had been recently bitten by some poisonous insect. She took Christine in her arms and said, “Don’t go now. Since you’re here, you must stay.” She wept noisily, her head pressed to her visitor’s shoulder, and said, “I’m glad you could come. I enjoyed your last visit so much. I’ve often spoken of it to my husband. If you doubt me, ask him, and he’ll tell you I have. It was pleasant of you to drop by again. I said I hoped Mrs. Penmark would drop in again.”
Then, releasing her guest, she sat on the sofa and said, “Come sit beside me, Christine. May I call you Christine? I’m quite aware that you come from a higher level of society than I do. I’m sure you made a debut and all that, but perhaps you won’t mind this once. I was a beauty-parlor operator, you know. I always considered Christine such a gentle name. Hortense has such a fat sound, doesn’t it? When I was a child, the other children used to sing a song they’d made up that went, ‘My girl Hortense, hasn’t got much sense. Let’s write her name on the privy fence.’ ” She
sighed, wiped her eyes, and said, “You know how nasty children can be sometimes?”