The Cost of Living (4 page)

Reaching out of bed, she slammed the window. The room was suddenly quiet, and through the hot-air register she could hear Mrs. Tracy downstairs, asking Doris if she had ever seen such a perfect morning. Doris's answer was lost in the whir of the electric mixer.

Every day of summer, so far, had been launched on a wave of Mrs. Tracy's good will and optimism. Madeline settled back in bed and closed her eyes. Seven more days to Labor Day, she thought, and only then did she remember that it was her birthday. Three years ago, she had been fourteen. In another three, she would be twenty. She was unmarried and not in love and without a trace of talent in any direction. It seemed to her the worst of all possible days.

Turning to the window, she looked with distaste at the top of a pear tree. Someone, Paul or Allie, was scratching at her door.

“Paul, if that's you, then come in. Please don't lurk in the hall.”

He slid around the door, spectacles gleaming, with an armful of books. Too wary to speak until he had judged her temper, he sat down on one of the blue-and-white striped chairs, balancing his books.

“Have you come to wish me happy birthday?” Madeline asked. She sat up in bed, tugging halfheartedly at a strap of her nightgown that had broken in the night. With everybody but Paul, she was almost nunlike in her decorum, but she had decided early in the summer that he would put up with anything, and immodesty was only one of the ways she showed her contempt for his unmanliness.

He smiled, or gave way to a nervous tic—Madeline could never be sure which it was. “No,” he said, fidgeting. “I did not come for your birthday but to ask you to read this paper and correct the English.” He seemed to Madeline doomed for life to ask for help and speak with a slight accent.

“Say ‘this,'” she said. “Not ‘ziss.'”

“Ziss,” he repeated after her.

Mrs. Tracy had hoped that Paul and Madeline would become friends, but, as it happened, they were without interest in each other. Their only common ground was the help Madeline could give him with his studies, and this she did with an ill grace.

“They're nearly of an age—only three years or so apart,” Mrs. Tracy had told her husband in the spring, before she opened the house in the country. “They're both adrift, in a way—Paul on account of the war, and Madeline from her family. A summer there might do wonders.”

Edward Tracy had said nothing. Technically, the Connecticut house belonged to his wife, who had inherited it. Loving it and remembering her own childhood there, she looked upon her summers as a kind of therapy to be shared with the world. Edward, therefore, merely added this summer of Paul and Madeline to his list of impossible summers. These included the summer of the Polish war orphans, the summer of the tennis court, the summer of Mrs. Tracy's cousins, the summer of the unmarried mother, the summer of the Friends of France, and the summer of Bundles for Britain.

Paul and Madeline were less destructive than the Poles and less expensive than the tennis court. Unlike the unmarried mother, they did not leave suicide notes in the car. They were, on the face of it, quiet and undemanding. But there was an unhappiness about them, a lack of ease, that trailed through the house, affecting the general atmosphere. Sometimes Edward felt that having them there was bad for Allie, but he wasn't certain why or how. He said nothing about it, since, as he told himself, he saw them only weekends and couldn't judge.

The morning of Madeline's birthday, searching for an excuse to leave the city a day early and so have a long weekend, Edward remembered that he and Madeline had had a quarrel of a sort, and he thought, aggrieved, She is keeping me out of my own house. Edward had been drinking the evening before and felt, if not ill, at least indecisive. He sat at the dining-room table unable to drink his coffee or leave it alone, uncomfortable in the empty apartment but reluctant to go out into the heat of the street. Feeling sorry for himself, half wishing himself out of town, he thought of his last conversation with Madeline.

He had found her before one of his wife's white-painted bookcases. Madeline had been sunbathing and smelled of scented oil. Her hair, too long and thick for the season, had been pinned up and was beginning to straggle. Through the window, Edward could see the lawn sloping away to one of Anna's gardens. Anna, with Allie at her heels, moved along the flower border, doing something. They were fair-haired and unhurried. Edward looked at them and approved. He turned to Madeline and frowned. She, ignoring him, knelt on the floor to examine the bottom shelf.

“Looking for something special?” he asked.

Without turning, she said, “I found one book I liked and I thought you might have another.”

“What was that?”

“You probably haven't read it,” Madeline said, intending the insult. “It was about a girl who worked in a travel agency and fell in love with a lawyer. It was more than that, really, but that was the main thing.”

“It sounds like a woman's book,” Edward said. “What happened to the girl and the lawyer?” It seemed to him impossible to stop talking.

“He deceived the girl, so she ran a car into something and killed them both.”

“Are you sure it belongs to us?” Edward asked.

“Yes. And it was good. I think someone gave it to you.” She looked at him for the first time. “I can always tell your books by the funny little plate at the front.”

Edward looked back at her with loathing and said, “It doesn't sound like terribly healthy reading for a young girl. I think you should spend more time at other things.”

“Do you?” Madeline said. “Excuse me, I have to get by you to get out.”

She left the room and ran upstairs, her heart pounding with fright and anger.

“Do you know what I hate more than anything?” Madeline said to Paul on the morning of her birthday. “I hate older men who look at girls and insult them.” It was an unusually chatty remark for Madeline, but Paul was not listening.

“That little pear tree is dying,” he said.

“Let it.” Madeline was a city child. The country, with its hills and stretches and unexplained silences, bored and depressed her. Paul considered her.

“Where would you rather be?”

“I don't know,” Madeline said indifferently. “Camp was worse.”

“But Mrs. Tracy found you alone in an apartment,” he said, as if he were telling her about someone else.

Madeline made a face. She was accustomed to being discussed, and she could imagine Mrs. Tracy's version of the story. It was true; she had been found alone in her mother's apartment. Madeline was to have slept there overnight in the interval between the end of school and the start of her holidays, but her mother had forgotten to write and tell her that she was spending the summer with the Tracys, or had neglected to post the letter, and Madeline had remained in the apartment three weeks.

Her mother had been away since Christmas. The apartment was shrouded in white dust covers, the telephone disconnected. No one knew that Madeline was there except the janitor, who had given her the key. Her allowance for the summer, a lump sum from her father, had arrived before the closing of school. She lived on chocolates and liverwurst sandwiches, went to the movies every day, and was ideally happy. All around her in the building was a pleasant bustle of latchkeys, footsteps, voices in the kitchen air shaft, sometimes a radio. Then Anna Tracy had arrived and carried her off like a scoop of ice cream.

“I think I like cities,” Madeline said. She lay back with her head on the pillow and closed her eyes. “Are you never going?” she said, not intending it as a question. “If you want to use the bathroom, please go now. I'm going to wash my hair.”

The birthday must have put her in an excellent temper, Paul thought. Otherwise, she would never have suggested that he use the bathroom first, for it was a constant grievance between them. It adjoined both their rooms, but Madeline treated it entirely as her own. She left powder on the bathmat, towels on the floor. Every morning, Paul found his towels pushed aside and Madeline's underthings hanging to dry. Ashamed for her, Paul would mop the tub and cap the toothpaste. Madeline would admit no part of Paul into her life. They did not even have a cake of soap in common.
He
might be one of Anna Tracy's casualties; she was not. Without finding words for it, Paul knew that her untidiness had something to do with her attitude toward him and the entire household. He wished she would employ a less troublesome method of showing it.

He stood up and, taking advantage of her humor, paused at the door, and said, “If I go now, will you read my term paper while I'm gone? I must give it to the mailman this morning.”

He stepped aside as he said it, and for an astonished moment Madeline thought he expected her to throw something at him. But it was only because of Allie, who had been struggling with the door handle and now burst into the room, hairbrush in hand.

“I was told to tell you a happy birthday,” she said to Madeline. “Will you do my hair?”

Madeline sat up. “Am I the only person in this house who can do things?” she asked. “No, I am not going to do your hair and I'm not going to read Paul's paper, because it's my birthday.”

Allie sat down on the bed, leaning comfortably across Madeline's feet. She offered the hairbrush as if she hadn't heard. “What an adorable nightgown that is,” she said. “Doris is making you a cake.”

Madeline kicked at her from under the covers. “Get off and get out,” she said. “You're more annoying than Paul.” She looked at Paul and he smiled foolishly, backing into the hall with his books.

“I'll be back later,” he promised.

“Now, as for you—” Madeline said to Allie. She took the hairbrush and began brushing Allie's hair so hard that it hurt.

Allie, accustomed to this daily punishment, said only, “Braid it good and tight, otherwise it comes undone in the water.”

“Since it's my birthday,” said Madeline, “could you do me a favor and leave me alone all day? Without even speaking to me?”

“No,” Allie said, and added warningly, “Don't yell at me—Mummy's coming.”

“Happy birthday!” Mrs. Tracy said as she opened the door. She was wearing blue and looked younger than Madeline. “Allie, let Madeline get dressed. Go on downstairs and put her present in front of her place.” She moved quietly about the room picking up and straightening Madeline's belongings. It had been her own room before she married, and it was perfect for a
jeune fille
, but Madeline, she felt, would have been just as happy in a tent on the lawn.

“You're a very sloppy girl,” she observed, “even for your age. But I daresay it's a reaction to boarding school. That's one good thing about this house. People can relax in it and be what they are. I mean I couldn't survive the winter without a summer here.”

“Couldn't you?” said Madeline. “I could, with pleasure.”

No one—not even Madeline—was ever rude to Mrs. Tracy, and she stood still, rooted with shock, Madeline's bathing suit in her hand. Then she saw that Madeline was crying. “Oh!” Mrs. Tracy exclaimed. “Not on your birthday! Allie, honey, will you do what Mummy tells you and go downstairs?”

She sat down on the bed where Allie had been. “I can't think what can be wrong,” she said. She did not touch Madeline but folded her hands on her lap and looked at them, frowning. “On your birthday,” she repeated wonderingly. “I know it sounds trite, but this is the best time of your life, this and the next four or five years. Why, when I think of your mother at your age! All the gardenias and the orchids! These are the years that should be absolute heaven for you.”

From behind her hands, Madeline said, “I wish you had left me in town. I was perfectly all right.”

“I can't listen to such nonsense,” Mrs. Tracy said. She stood up, smoothing the covers at Madeline's feet. “Allie, will you please, for the love of God, do what Mummy tells you for once and go downstairs?”

“I don't like Mr. Tracy,” Madeline said, “and he doesn't like me.”

“You're being dramatic,” Mrs. Tracy said, “but it's normal at your age.” More gently, she added, “But you mustn't cry over nothing. In a few years, you can do anything you please, as I do, or your mother does. Now get dressed and come to breakfast, like a good girl. This is a terrible start for a birthday.”

Still hiding her face, Madeline nodded, and Mrs. Tracy fled down the staircase, relieved to be away from so much emotion. Perhaps Madeline had been miserable all summer.

In the kitchen, she found Allie sitting on a high stool, holding a large mixing bowl between her knees. She was scraping the sides of the bowl with a rubber spatula and licking off bits of cake batter. Her pale hair, brushed but unbraided, was smeared with batter and stuck to her cheeks.

“Allie! Not before breakfast,” Mrs. Tracy said, from habit. Allie, aware of the absentminded voice, went on without answering. Mrs. Tracy sat down at the table and leaned her head on her hand. Finally, she said, “When you were upstairs, before I came in, how did Madeline act?”

“Like always.”

“What does that tell me? Put that thing—that bowl—down. What is ‘always'?”

“With Madeline, it means to be rude.”

“Yes. But was she crying? Did she say anything about me?”

“No,” Allie said, embarrassed.

“This is dreadful,” said Mrs. Tracy. “I can't live for the rest of the summer, even seven days of it, with someone in the house who is thinking only of the train to New York.”

This was beyond Allie. She murmured, “If she is going, will we have a birthday party just the same?”

“There! The party!” Mrs. Tracy cried. “And your father won't be here. This is his fault. If he had been here, if he had spent more time with us, none of this would have happened.”

“We could call him,” Allie said. “I can get long distance.”