Nothing That Meets the Eye (20 page)

Mrs. Robertson did not go the next day to the little park down the avenue. She took Philip to a court in the center of Castle Terrace where there was a big sandbox and many small children for him to play with.

Philip stood where his mother had turned him loose and looked up at the building that rose like a great tan hollowed-out mountain around him, and asked, “Aren't we going to the park later?”

“Aren't we going to the park later, Mama?” he asked again, when his mother had settled herself in a comfortable metal chair. “I want to see Dickie.”

“No, darling, we're not going to the park today.” She tried to make her voice gentle and casual, too, and it was difficult. And perhaps she had failed, she thought as she watched Philip pedal off very slowly on his tricycle, with an air of seeing nothing around him.

There were many other young mothers in the play court, and Mrs. Robertson was soon occupied in conversation. She felt right, here in the court of her own apartment building. Why had she tried to be different and find a nicer place? The park was pretty and Philip would miss it, of course, for a few days, but she did not regret her decision not to go back. Here there was sun, too, things for Philip to play on, and an abundance of children for him to make friends with, children she could be sure were clean and being well brought up. And other women, like herself, with whom she could exchange ideas.

“I want Dickie,” said Philip, coming up slowly on his tricycle. He had cruised the playground and found it unsatisfactory.

“Darling, there's some little boys over by the sandbox. Don't you want to go play with them?” She turned back to the women she had been talking with, lest she seem as concerned as she felt to Philip.

“I want Dickie!” said Philip two minutes later. Now he had got off his tricycle and stood away from it, as if he would never mount it again unless it was to go see his friend. He had tears in his eyes. He looked at his mother with resentment, and with determined, uncomprehending ­accusation.

This was the moment to be firm, Mrs. Robertson knew, to ignore it or to say something that would satisfy or silence forever. She hesitated, at a loss.

“Who's Dickie?” asked one of the women.

“He's a little boy he met down the street,” Mrs. Robertson answered.

As if piqued at their mention of his friend, Philip about-faced and wandered off with his head up, and thus his mother was spared making the answer she could not find.

Philip asked for Dickie the next afternoon, and the next and the next. But the fifth afternoon he did not ask.

THE PIANOS OF THE STEINACHS

L
ike a docile but somewhat bewildered monster of an earlier age, the big shiny black Pierce Arrow crept backward down the driveway, popping gravel under its narrow tires. Sunlight made its highlights twinkle. Languid fingers of the weeping willows, their chartreuse just beginning to turn with autumn, brushed its roof and its closed windows with delicate affection: the Pierce Arrow and the willows had grown old together, though both were still beautiful. Next door the Carstairs children and their friends stopped their sidewalk play and stood agape, held by a mild, private kind of awe that did not quite merit comment or perhaps was not expressible. Only once in three weeks or so did anything happen in the Steinach driveway, and besides, how often did they see anywhere such a peculiar car as this?

“Ooh!” shuddered one of the little girls as the wide-set headlights tipped off the driveway and the car aligned itself with Verona Street. With a burst of laughter, the group came to life again.

“Klett! Isn't that an exciting name, Moth-aw?” Agnes Steinach was saying. She rolled the window all the way down, eagerly but jerkily, like one inept at mechanics. Her hands were the long soft ones commonly called a “dreamer's” and they looked completely useless.

“You should not get so excited, Agnes,” remarked Mrs. Steinach.

“Oh, Moth-aw!” Agnes laughed a little wildly, aware that she had not felt such exuberance in months. “Do you suppose Margaret has changed much, Moth-aw?”

“I wouldn't wonder, after three years.” Mrs. Steinach inclined her head as the delivery boy of Reed's Grocery rode by on his bicycle, tipping his cap. A gray, very small woman, Mrs. Steinach sat as bolt upright as the car seat itself in order to see through the windshield. She looked straight ahead with her habitually preoccupied and somewhat worried ­expression.

“I don't think Margaret will think I've changed much, do you?” Agnes widened her eyes like a child at her mother, but in fact her eyes most of all gave away her thirty-five years. They were surrounded by a fine mesh of wrinkles that made the eyes themselves look like a pair of strange, semitransparent, blue-violet colored fish, caught up in nets. Wavy tresses of black hair made her pallor striking. The even whiteness of her face suggested the purifying effects of raging fever.

“No, indeed, child,” Mrs. Steinach said indulgently.

“You don't sound at all excited, Moth-aw.”

“We turn here, don't we?”

The Pierce Arrow rounded the corner onto Washington Avenue and proceeded toward the railroad station. The car moved rigidly and at moderate speed as though it were part of a funeral cortege. They were on their way to meet Agnes's sister Margaret, a music teacher who was bringing a student from a San Francisco conservatory to New York. Her letter two days before had said she would have the weekend free to spend with them in Evanston.

But the train from San Francisco was two hours late. Agnes's smile fell away until her mouth, which she rouged heavily, was nothing but soft curves expressive of a petulant sadness. Her great violet eyes stretched wide at the information clerk as though he had done her a personal wrong out of some personal malice.

Mrs. Steinach, on the other hand, accepted the situation with a little “Oh” and remarked they had best go home and come again at five o'clock. It would give Agnes an opportunity to rest, she said. It would be quite a strain on her, the two drives and company, too.

“But Moth-aw, I've never felt so gloriously well in my life!”

Even outdoors her voice sounded as hollow, as capable of echoes and as much like an echo itself as it did in their quiet old house. It slid around high in the treble register like an affected falsetto, or like the tone of a bent saw struck with a rubber hammer.

Back they went, and the willows welcomed the Pierce Arrow as fondly as if its mission had been successful.

Mowgli, the big white Angora, fled nervously from the corner of the sofa when Agnes and her mother entered the living room. Mowgli had been stone deaf since before his prime, which perhaps aggravated his sense of disturbance at the sight of activity. Halfway up the stairs he waited for Agnes or her mother to come and stroke him so he might return with dignity, but today neither of them noticed him.

“Are you sure she said three o'clock, Moth-aw?”

Agnes ignored her mother's ignoring of her—Mrs. Steinach was on the way back to the kitchen—and ran upstairs to make sure once more that the silver thermos in the guest room, which was to be Klett's, was filled with ice water, that the nosegay of little flowers in her father's shaving mug was still fresh, that the not always reliable thermostat promised hot water in case he wanted to shave. Men always wanted very hot water, especially in the mornings. But wouldn't it be funny if Klett were too young to shave after all? Margaret's letter had said he was only eighteen.

The guest room was in perfect order, the writing desk opened, its glass inkpot filled, the counterpane newly ironed so its lace ruffles would look their crispest. With the shades up, the wallpaper of cream and tiny royal blue flowers looked really very bright and attractive. There was firewood and kindling ready, though the temperature was just a bit warm for a fire.

“Mr-row?” Mowgli had followed her to the threshold, curious that the room had been opened. His mouth was soft and sad, one of his blue eyes cast. He stared at his mistress with an air of bewilderment and sullen madness.

Agnes floated to the window like a dancer, holding her arms as though they trailed a diaphanous material. She held back a limp brocade curtain and gazed down onto the row of willows, onto the smooth gravel driveway that was itself beautiful, the corner of the front lawn bordered with a few violets that waved like tattered flags in the breeze. And the willows? They were like a forest of little yellow and green barber poles, twisting up and then untwisting. Or were they more like a cluster of champagne fountains? How sweet it would all look to Margaret! And with a vicarious thrill she imagined Klett's first glimpse of their home. Modestly sized as it was, compared to others in the block, everything about it reflected perfect taste. The living room, in which pale blue velvet predominated, certainly invited one to relax in soft comfort and forget all life's difficulties. She felt everyone of sensibility should detect in an instant the particular personality of her home, as a connoisseur detects a special vintage of wine. And of course Klett would be such a person, perhaps in fact a genius. Their two pianos in the living room would delight him, though they were a little out of tune. Possibly he and she would play something together. It had been many years since she had played duets with Margaret, many more since she and her father had played. Would Klett be handsome and fiery like Chopin? she wondered. Or would he be moody and somber like a young Beethoven?

Her eyes strayed through the willows to the moving blotch on the Carstairses' front walk. It was a man in a gray suit leading a small child by the hand. A kind of weight gathered and fell quietly inside her, and the diffused sadness in her eyes was focused by a look of fear. She remembered the day Billy Carstairs had been playing on his front lawn and she had invited him into the house for a glass of lemonade and told him a story about his dead father that had made his eyes grow big and his face white. The story had been absolutely false. She still remembered her thrill when Billy had begun to cry. She had made him promise he would never tell anyone, and she had felt she had control over him. But since that day Billy had avoided her on the street. And when he married and his child was born, Agnes had felt deep inside herself a kind of personal defeat. Now she hated it when she saw him with his silly-looking blond wife or with his child.

“Ag-ness?”

“Yes, Moth-aw!”

“Shouldn't you like a cup of tea?”

Agnes thought at first that her mother was going to bring it up, but of course she was not in bed now! And she did not feel weak or ill at all—just the least bit weak perhaps. She folded her hands behind her and leaned against the window jamb. “I'll be down immediately, Moth-aw!”

The hollow, falsetto voice, strong as a singer's, found its way into the varnished hall, down the short wide staircase, into the living room, where her mother poured tea into two flared white cups. Agnes glided down the steps almost, it seemed, before her voice had ceased to echo.

Then a car door slammed, and Agnes turned startled eyes to the front door. “They're here!—Oh, Moth-aw, you go!”

The door opened and Margaret almost toppled her mother with her embrace. “Mummy!—Agnie, you look splendid, darling!” she shouted over her mother's shoulder.

“Margaret, my angel!” Agnes held open her arms, curving her long fingers upward. She felt she could have wept.

“This is Klett. Klett Buchanan,” Margaret said, smiling at the boy who had crept inside the door with the couple of suitcases. “Klett, my mother and my sister Agnes.”

Agnes felt a sensation almost like one of recognition. He was so exactly what she had hoped, handsome, intense, with an air of distinction already, though his face was round as a child's.

“How do you do?” he said with a quick bow and a smile, showing even and rather girlish teeth. He was slight and not very tall and wore a plaid muffler tightly buttoned in by a gray and green Tyrolean-style jacket. He looked from one to another of the three with an air of being eager to please.

“How do you do?” whispered Agnes, last of all.

“Just in time for tea, how nice!” Margaret said, dropping her coat into a chair. “I know Klett's even hungrier than I am. They compromised by not taking on a diner and got us here fairly on time after all.”

They discussed the trains, the vain trip to the station, while Margaret buttered and marmaladed triangles of toast for everyone. Klett sat beside her in Mowgli's corner of the powder-blue sofa, holding his teacup stiffly.

“Tell us about yourself, Margaret.” Mrs. Steinach's face had grown much happier since Margaret's arrival. “It's so seldom we hear from you.”

“Oh, I'm just the same, I guess. My work now is more organizing than teaching. I pick the best for Moore's classes and grade them down. I told you about Moore. Then when I find someone like Klett, I recommend him as a special student. Only this time I mean to do some research work on my own in New York.” She looked suddenly at Agnes, who was not listening, then back at her mother. Her face with its strong nose lacked the regularity of Agnes's, but it was attractively frank and open, like a vigorous major chord itself. At thirty-eight she was still beautiful, even when she forgot to apply makeup, as she often did. “Oh, all that's dull. You don't look a day older, you know, Mummy. And the house ­hasn't changed a bit, has it?”

“But however did you find Klett?” Agnes interrupted gaily, feeling Klett with his musical ear must be noticing her voice, which had wider range, was more feminine than Margaret's. “I do wish you'd play something for us. Only”—she caught her breath—“it's too early, isn't it?”

“Much too early.” Margaret gazed affectionately at Klett as he circled the two baby grand pianos set curve to curve in the corner of the room. “I didn't mention those, Klett. I'm sure they're horribly out of tune.”

“Oh!” Agnes gasped, shocked at Margaret's bluntness, but no one seemed to hear the gasp.

“Do you play?” Klett asked her.

Agnes smiled up at him. “After a fashion. Oh, but music is the joy of my life!” She wished he would ask her to play something now. She had been practicing a Chopin nocturne until she was sure it was perfect. “How wonderful it must be to be master of an instrument at eighteen!”

“Yes,” Mrs. Steinach put in.

Klett lowered his smooth face modestly.

“Klett's not quite a master, though he might get there if he works.” Margaret extended another toast and marmalade to him. “Here, Klett.”

Agnes laughed nervously. “Why you talk to him like a dog, ­Margaret!”

“Do I? He bears up,” she said with a smile. “Mummy, you're sure it won't be too much trouble to put us up until Monday morning?”

“Why, of course not!” Agnes cried. “What a question!”