The Moffats (14 page)

Or maybe Sylvie would be running up the street with Edie Ellenbach, coming from choir rehearsal. Or best of all, perhaps Mama herself would be coming with Dr. Belknap, good jolly Dr. Belknap. Because Rufus was ill and Mama didn't know what was the matter with him at all. She had tried all the usual home remedies—mustard plaster, camomile tea, even castor oil. The mere fact that Rufus took all these things without a murmur showed there must be something very wrong with him.

"Oh, please, someone come home," said Jane, dashing the tears away. She had to keep rubbing at her clear spot on the windowpane because her breath kept steaming it up. The street lamplighter came along, stamping his feet and thrashing his arms about, it was so cold. He had earmuffs on and his breath came out in great gusts of steam. He lit match after match and fastened them in his long pole. This he raised carefully to the pilot of the street lamp, but the wind kept blowing the matches out. Finally he had to shinny up the post and light it with his hand. Then he closed the little door on the lamp, jumped down, and disappeared up the street, lowering his head against the cold.

When he had gone, Jane felt more lonely and sad than ever. Seeing him light his matches had made her think of "The Little Match Girl." Great tears welled in her eyes, some for Rufus, some for the cold lamplighter, some for herself, who was no longer Janey Moffat but a poor little match girl, huddling in some doorway and lighting the last match with her poor frozen fingers—

The sound of an automobile sputtering in the cold clear night up New Dollar Street aroused her to action. Maybe this was Dr. Belknap and Mama now! Carefully she took the smallest lamp and placed it in the window over the porch where it would shine a welcome. Then she lit the feeble gas jet that sent out a pale flickering flame on the wall in the sitting room. Now all was ready. Feeling excited over all this unaccustomed responsibility, she tiptoed back to the kitchen and started to peel the onions for supper.

The car stopped in front of the yellow house with more loud beings. It surely must be Dr. Belknap's Ford. It was! She heard Mama's low urgent voice on the porch and the doctor's loud, cheerful one in answer. Jane's heart beat very fast. A visit from the doctor was such a rare event. Usually Mama's remedies were completely successful.

Mama opened the door and in they came, letting in lots of cold crisp air, which made the lights in the gas jet and the oil lamps flutter wildly. Mama and the doctor waved their greetings to Janey and disappeared immediately into the front parlor, which Mama had made into a bedroom for Rufus. This would separate him from the rest of the family in case what he had was catching.

Janey stood in the kitchen doorway straining her ears, trying to hear what the doctor was saying. Joey and Sylvie arrived together at the back door and tiptoed to her side. Even the usually gay Sylvie looked worried. What was the matter with their Rufus? At last Mama and the doctor came out of Rufus's room. Janey, Sylvie, and Joe caught the last of what he was saying.

"...a very mild case. Don't worry. Do as I tell you and he will be all right. Good night. Good night, everyone. I'll be back tomorrow. As I leave I'll tack the scarlet fever quarantine sign on the house."

Scarlet fever! A firecracker would not have caused more amazement. Sylvie, Joe, and Janey looked at Mama in consternation. They had seen this sort of sign on other people's houses but never dreamed there would ever be one on theirs. Why, Jane remembered when Edie Ellenbach had scarlet fever, how she would go around the block rather than pass the Ellenbach home. Or if she just had to go that way, she'd hold her nose tightly until she thought she was out of the germ area. She certainly couldn't keep her fingers on her nose for all the time Rufus would be sick. She couldn't help laughing at this foolish idea.

But how many signs were they going to have on the yellow house anyway? There was already the For Sale sign. Now there was going to be Scarlet Fever, too! Janey didn't remember ever seeing two signs at the same time on anybody else's house on New Dollar Street. As awful as For Sale and Scarlet Fever were, Janey considered that perhaps there was a certain amount of importance in living in a house that had not one sign but two signs on it.

Now the door closed. The doctor was gone.

There was a deep silence in the yellow house while the tap-tapping of the doctor's hammer rang out in the frosty air. There it was! Scarlet Fever! None of the Moffats said a word. The silence continued until the spluttering of the doctor's car faded away completely down New Dollar Street.

Then Mama broke the silence with a little laugh. "Well, anyway," she said, "at least we will not have to worry about moving for a while. No one will think of buying the yellow house while there is a scarlet fever sign on the door."

Well, there was a little consolation in that thought, but it didn't ease the worry in all their hearts about Rufus. And Jane couldn't help those tears gathering on her lashes again.

The next few weeks were certainly topsy-turvy ones for the Moffats in the yellow house. Rufus was more ill than had first been thought, and there was one night when Mama did not go to bed at all. Dr. Belknap came every day up through that night when Rufus was so very sick. The doctor spent most of that night right there in the yellow house. Then he said, "Now he'll begin to get better," and sure enough, Rufus did.

All the while that Rufus was sick, Mama never came into the kitchen and she almost always wore a white mask over her mouth and nose. Joe filled her coal scuttle several times a day and left it in the kitchen doorway for her.

Sylvie was general manager in the kitchen. She planned the meals. She saw to it that the flatirons were heated each night for the beds upstairs because the bitter cold continued. You could never even see out of the windows. She sang a great deal as she worked and she invented fine tales to tell to Joe and to Jane. On the whole these three Moffats had a very hilarious time keeping house for themselves.

Jane helped a great deal with the cooking. She liked to cook, which Sylvie did not. And sometimes Jane did the sweeping. Sylvie would say to her, "Janey, you'll have to do the sweeping today. I won't have time. There is so much else to do."

It was funny, but this usually happened when Jane was lost in a book. Goodness, but it was hard to put down Andersen's fairy tales and take up the carpet sweeper. So she devised a method of holding the book in one hand and the carpet sweeper in the other. The carpet sweeper she ran up and down, up and down, over and over on the same spot. At the bottom of each page she moved to another spot and there ran the sweeper back and forth, back and forth ... but sometimes she would forget to move, she would be so lost in "The Snow Queen" or "The Steadfast Tin Soldier," and there she would stand, rooted to the same spot for pages, or until she heard Sylvie coming. Then quickly she would fall to work again and work twice as hard to make up for these lapses.

As for Joe, he had finished the whistle he was making for Rufus and had started making one for himself. He kept the kitchen fire going, the ashes sifted, and the water pipes from freezing. He tried to become more intimate with Catherine-the-cat, but her cold, aloof nature was not to be changed. Mama was the only person she had any use for. And she missed her dreadfully. She tried constantly to break away from this intolerable bondage in the kitchen and get into the sitting room, where Mama was. Finally she learned there was no use in this. One of those children foiled her each time. So she maintained a sullen silence for the rest of Rufus's illness. Once when Joe tried to pet her, she jumped up and ran under the stove with disdainful hisses. This was very strange considering how gentle Joe always was and always had been with animals. "So why," wondered Jane in exasperation, watching Catherine's two yellow eyes gleaming in the darkness under the stove, "why can't you be real friends with Joe?"

The days passed very slowly. Sylvie, Joe, and Jane could hardly remember the time when Rufus did not have scarlet fever. Every day the grocery boy came to the back door and knocked for the grocery order. Joe would call it out to him through a crack in the door, a half peck potatoes, a soup bone, a pound of lentils, or whatever Sylvie needed for the day, because of course they couldn't even pass a paper list to the boy lest a germ escape. Later in the day the grocery boy would come back, leave the supplies on the back stoop, knock, and run, not taking a good deep breath until he had gotten way past the empty lot next door.

But now Rufus was beginning to recuperate. He could sit up in bed and he wanted to know every five minutes why he couldn't go out now. Mama had a hard time keeping him amused. She told him stories. She told him the kind that always begins, "Once upon a time..." and she told him the kind about when she was a little girl in New York, that always began, "Well, then..." or just, "Well..."

"Tell about when you were little in New York, Mama," Rufus said.

"Well ... in New York City where I lived with Mother and Tina, my big sister (that's your Tonty), and Nora, my lame sister, when the hurdy-gurdy man came around with his organ and his monkey, the children all danced in the street. That's what they did in the Village anyway, in Greenwich Village where I was born and lived until Sylvie came. Well, Tina and I used to dance, too, of course. And Nora would sit up there in the window, so pale and pretty, and clap her hands and watch. All the children in the block came and danced and sang and clapped their hands. And finally when it was all over, the monkey went around collecting pennies in his little red hat. Why, he used to climb right up to Nora's window on the second floor and take her penny right out of her hand."

And Mama would pause, remembering.