Belles on Their Toes (13 page)

Ernestine glared at him and put her forefinger to her lips, but tried to laugh gaily.

“When he came in,” said Tom, “I ast him for six cans of peas. He jumped and said, ‘Yes, sir, anything else?’ Henc, henc.”

“It’s so amusing to have Tom around, don’t you think?” Ernestine said loudly. “Will you be good enough to excuse me for a minute, Mother dear? I’ll just run out and see who it is.”

“Bring him right in,” Mother told her. “Perhaps he’d like some dessert.”

Ernestine walked to the dining-room door. “Why it’s Al!” she exclaimed. “How delightful!”

She closed the door behind her, and we heard some running in the hall.

“I didn’t know he came from a wealthy family,” Anne whispered.

“He wrote Ern about it,” Martha explained. “His father sold his produce business and bought some stocks.”

Ern and Al appeared in the dining room with their arms around each other’s waists. Al had hung up his raccoon coat and porkpie hat, and there was a ring around his patent-leather hair, where the hatband had rested.

“We’ll leave your suitcases and ukulele in the hall,” Ern told him. “I’ll see that our man takes them up to the guest room.” She glanced apprehensively toward the butler’s pantry, but Tom was fortunately in the kitchen, out of earshot.

Just as at Nantucket, Al still seemed a little top collegiate. Only now he also seemed a little too opulent. His clothes were new, extreme, and expensive. His plus-eight knickers hung almost to his shoes, and a jeweled tie pin sparkled above the neck of his blue and white checked sweater.

Al was smiling, and very handsome. He considered himself well in command of the situation.

“Greetings and salutations, everybody,” he said. “Just one great big happy family, eh?”

We said greetings and we guessed he was right. All the boys stood up—Ernestine had instructed them carefully on that.

“I’d like you to meet my mother,” Ernestine said formally. “Mother, may I present Mr. Lynch.”

“How do you do, Mr. Lynch,” said Mother. “We’ve all been looking forward to your visit.”

“Meased to pleet you,” Al chuckled, wringing her hand. “Meased to pleet you. My friends call me Al.”

“That’s nice,” Mother said, favoring him with what was meant to be a cordial smile. But she looked as if she wondered what his enemies called him; and as if, providing they were searching for a word, she might be able to supply it.

“And this is Anne,” Ernestine said. “She’s just home from Michigan.”

“Press the flesh,” said Al, pressing it. He didn’t exactly go into a clog dance when he put out his hand. But you had the feeling that he might. “Where have you been all my life, baby?”

We thought Anne was going to tell him she had been hiding from him, but instead she swallowed and asked him how things were at Sagiwan Agricultural and Technical.

“Fine and dandy,” Al boomed. “Couldn’t be better. I guess you read about how we massacred the football team from Wallace Teachers?”

“Isn’t that,” Anne guessed, “the traditional Turkey Day classic?”

“It sure is,” Al agreed. “You read about it, eh?”

“It was splashed all over the front pages of the papers out in Michigan,” Anne said innocently. “I wish I had thought to save you the clippings.”

Ernestine introduced him to the rest of us, and we all pressed the flesh. He pulled a chair up backwards to the table, and sat with his legs straddling the back.

“Did you pipe the chariot?” he asked Ern, pointing nonchalantly, hitch-hiker fashion, with his thumb toward the window.

“Why, no,” said Ern. “Where is it?” She went to the window. “Gosh, is that yours? Why, isn’t that a Packard?”

“A little something the old man gave me for Christmas. Cost more than two thousand beans.”

“Does that answer your question?” Anne asked Martha.

“Isn’t that grand,” Ernestine exclaimed. But there seemed to be some doubt in her voice. Al in Montclair, with the family, didn’t seem quite so attractive as he had when they were alone in Nantucket.

While he was eating the tapioca Mother served him, Al told us about how he had scored two touchdowns against Wallace Teachers; about how the old man was building a little twenty room place, that would cost seventy-five thousand beans, on the Niagara River; about how the Tau Tau Taus had stolen a small structure from a farmer’s backyard and had put it on the front porch of the Tri-Alph house, just before the guests arrived for the big annual homecoming swing-out.

We listened, even supplying the necessary polite laughter. But we knew now, if ever there had been any doubt, that he wasn’t the man for Ernestine.

Al and Ern decided to go riding in the Packard after lunch. Al was buttoned up snugly in his fur coat, and Ern not so snugly in her wool one. It was below freezing, and Ern was a little worried about whether she’d be warm enough in the open car.

“It’s all right, baby,” Al assured her as they said good-by to us in the hall. “If you get cold I’ll give you part of my coat—the sleeves.”

He threw his arms around her, to demonstrate, and then turned her loose, roared, slapped his knee, and actually nudged Mother.

“I think, Ern,” said Mother wincing and looking as if she’d like to wrap Al’s ukulele around his ears, “that you’d better run upstairs and get a blanket.”

Ern went and got one, and then they were off to the tune of a horn that played the first bar of “Jingle Bells.”

“You can see for yourself she’s made a terrible mistake,” Martha told Mother indignantly. “You’re going to have to tell her so.”

“I don’t think it’s fair to judge the boy on such a short acquaintance,” Mother said.

“We’re trailing by one point,” Frank mimicked, “and we’re on the thirty-five-yard line.”

“Thirty-five-yard stripe,” Martha corrected.

“Stripe,” Frank agreed. “I call the signal for a drop kick, and the center …”

“Pivot man,” said Martha.

“And the pivot man looked back like he thought I was crazy. The stands are going wild.”

“You stop that,” said Mother. “He’s Ernestine’s friend and he’s a guest, and that ought to be enough for all of us.”

“It’s certainly enough for me,” Martha replied. “I’ll bet two thousand beans on that!”

“Suppose he should become our brother,” Fred said. “How would you like that, Dan?”

“A good question,” Martha agreed. “Now go up and wash your mouth out with soap.”

We thought Anne, as the oldest, should try to help us make Mother see the light. But Anne merely grinned knowingly at Mother, who tried to avoid her glance.

“We’re not going to discuss the matter any more,” Mother said. “I want you boys to take his suitcases upstairs, and I don’t want anybody to do anything to hurt Ernestine’s feelings.”

Frank and Bill each took a sticker-spangled suitcase, and Fred followed with the ukulele.

“If Dad were here,” Bill said as he deposited the bags at the foot of his bed, “he’d run that sheik out of the house and all the way over the state line.”

“When he pulled that stuff about keeping her warm with his sleeves,” Frank agreed, “that’s when Dad would have swung at him. Mother doesn’t understand what things like that can lead to, the way Dad did.”

The boys decided that as the men of the house it was up to them to get rid of Al. Since it was futile to work on Ernestine, the best approach was to do a job on Al.

All the boys took baths that afternoon, and toward the end the hot water gave out. Frank got a screw driver and took the bolt off the boys’ bathroom door. Bill opened the bathroom window.

In spite of their coats and the blanket, Ern and Al were blue when they returned home, about half an hour before the supper guests were to arrive. Both hurried upstairs to bathe and dress.

The boys were in Fred’s and Dan’s room, and they heard Al walking around as he unpacked and undressed. Finally they heard him enter the bathroom, experiment with the door to see why it wouldn’t lock, and then slam down the window.

The water started to run in the tub.

“We’ll wait about three minutes,” Frank chuckled. “Can’t you just see him now, shivering, leaning over, and running his finger under the faucet, waiting for the water to get hot?”

A chilled, unhappy baritone started to emerge from the boys’ bathroom. Something about how undergraduates at Sagiwan were willing to give their all to the institution, and about how other seats of learning would find their lines riddled and their ends outflanked.

Mr. Lynch apparently was one who subscribed to the theory that if you couldn’t lock it, the next best thing was to make such a racket that everybody would know it was occupied.

The water in the tub finally stopped running. The baritone became more chilled and unhappy, was choked off entirely in a shuddering gasp, and then was breathlessly resumed.

“He’s under water,” Frank said. “Go ahead, Bill.”

Bill walked down the hall to the bathroom and went in. Al, sitting miserably in about an inch of water, grabbed for a washcloth when he heard the door open, and spread it over himself as best he could.

“Brrr,” shivered Bill, “what have you got the room so cold for?”

“Good Lord,” hissed Al, “I thought maybe you were one of the girls. For Pete’s sake, close that door.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Bill, closing it. “Nobody thinks anything about things like that in a large family.”

“They don’t?” Al asked dubiously.

“Nobody’ll pay any attention to you if they walk in,” Bill said. “They won’t even notice you’re in the tub.”

“You mean they may come in?”

Bill shrugged his shoulders. “What have you got it so cold for? Is that part of the training rules?”

“I haven’t got it cold on purpose, you can bet your sweet life on that,” Al yelped. “The window was open, and there wasn’t a drop of hot water.”

“I believe I’d leave the door open,” Bill suggested. “At least until the room warms up.”

“Just leave the door closed. I don’t come from a large family.”

“Suit yourself, then. I’ll ask Mother to heat some water on the stove and bring it up.”

“Never mind,” said Al, who wasn’t sure whether Bill meant that he or Mother would deliver the water. “I won’t be in here that long.”

Bill helped himself to a glass of water and departed, forgetting to close the door.

“Close that door,” Al hollered after him. “How many times do I have to tell you!”

“Okay,” said Bill, returning. “Of course, if you
like
it cold in there.” He slammed the door.

The older boys sent Fred and Dan together into the bathroom to wash their hands. Neither of them paid any attention to Al, who sat muttering in the tub, trying to finish his bath and get out.

Then it was Frank’s turn. Frank had put on one of Martha’s dresses, silk stockings, high heel shoes and a cloche hat.

“If he knows it’s me,” Frank said, getting cold feet, “he may get out of there and give me a licking.”

“He hasn’t been here long enough to tell any of us apart,” Bill assured him. “And if we hear you holler, we’ll all come running. We can handle him.”

“Just to be safe,” Frank insisted, “get the hockey sticks.”

Frank entered the bathroom. As he heard the door open, Al made another precautionary grab for the washcloth.

“Yipe,” he screamed, when he saw the female garb. He tried to submerge all of himself under the surface of the water, but the one-inch level in the tub offered slight protection.

“Oh, hello there, Big Boy,” said Frank, waving effeminately. “Did you have a nice ride? I’ll only be a jiffy.” He hurried to the sink and got a glass of water, drank it, and started out.

“Hey, wait a minute,” Al growled. “I know you. You think you’re pretty smart, don’t you?” He made a grab, but Frank got by the tub, and out into the hall. Al didn’t follow him.

Ernestine knew about there not being any hot water, because she had taken a bath herself. She was furious, but her guests started arriving and she had no chance to take the boys to task.

Ernestine answered the door and showed her friends into the parlor. There were about twenty of them. We knew them all, and liked them. We pulled back the rugs and started the phonograph.

Al was a little late coming downstairs. It may have been that he was hunched over a radiator, or it may have been that his wardrobe took a good while to adjust, or that he had to change his hair oil.

Ernestine’s girl friends kept telling her they were dying to meet Al, and her boy friends said they wanted to meet the out-of-town sheik who had cut them out. None of them had failed to notice the Packard, parked out in front, and they were impressed.

Al finally made his entrance. All the other boys had on suits, but Al apparently preferred sweaters and plus-eights. He had his ukulele with him, and his life-of-the-party smile. He walked over and turned off the phonograph. Everybody stopped dancing, and he had the center of the stage.

“Greetings and salutations, guys and gals,” he said, without waiting to be introduced. And this time he actually did do a clog step, ending up on one knee, like Al Jolson.

“A little number,” said Ernestine’s Al, “entitled ‘I Used to Shower My Sweetie With Presents, But It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More.’”

He threw back his head and started to strum the uke and to sing. “Dew ackker dew ackker dew, vo doe dee oh doe.”

There was no doubt he could play the ukulele, all right. And his baritone was much better than in the icy bathtub. But you just couldn’t start out a party that way, even in the Jazz Age. Maybe after midnight, after everybody had got to know him better, it might have gone over.

Ern’s guests stood there woodenly, looking first at her and then at Mother, who was sitting near the fireplace with some knitting. No matter what Mother may have felt, she showed no disapproval.

Ernestine tried to help her beau. She started to Charleston alongside of him, and shouted “Come on everybody.” She even licked first her right thumb and then her left, in a series of wind-mill gyrations known as pickin’ cherries.

But it still didn’t go over. And the worst of it was that every one except Al realized exactly what Ern was doing and why she was doing it. They were pulling for her. Some of her girl friends started to Charleston alongside of her. And some of the boys began to sing along with Al.