The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher (42 page)

Miss Onderdonk’s voice, with its little, cut-off chicken laugh, travelled down to her from the steps. “Can’t say it didn’t cross my mind, though, that the girl does have the look.”

Hester went out into the highway and walked quickly back to the farmhouse. Skirting the porch, she tiptoed around to one side, over to an old fringed hammock slung between two trees whose broad bottom fronds almost hid it. She swung herself into it, covered herself over with the side flaps, and held herself stiff until the hammock was almost motionless.

Mrs. Garfunkel and Arline could be heard on the porch, evidently alone, for now and then Mrs. Garfunkel made one of the fretful, absent remarks mothers make to children when no one else is around. Arline had some kind of wooden toy that rumbled back and forth across the porch. Now and then, a bell on it went “ping.”

After a while, someone came along the path and up on the porch. Hester lay still, the hammock fringe tickling her face. “Almost time for supper,” she heard Mrs. Garfunkel say.

“Yes,” said her mother’s voice. “Did Hester come back this way?”

“I was laying down for a while. Arline, dear, did you see Hester?”

“No, Mummy.” Ping, ping went Arline’s voice.

“‘Mummy’!” said Mrs. Garfunkel. “That’s that school she goes to—you know the Kemp-Willard School, on Eighty-sixth?”

“Oh, yes,” said Mrs. Elkin. “Quite good, I’ve heard.”

“Good!” Mrs. Garfunkel sighed, on a sleek note of outrage. “What they soak you, they ought to be.”

Arline’s toy rumbled across the porch again and was still.

“She’ll come back when she’s hungry, I suppose,” said Mrs. Elkin. “There was a rather unfortunate little—incident, down the road.”

“Shush, Arline. You don’t say?”

Chairs scraped confidentially closer. Mrs. Elkin’s voice dropped to the low,
gemütlich
whisper reserved for obstetrics, cancer, and the peculations of servant girls. Once or twice, the whisper, flurrying higher, shook out a gaily audible phrase. “Absolutely wouldn’t believe—” “Can you imagine anything so silly?” Then, in her normal voice, “Of course, she’s part deaf, and probably a little crazy from being alone so much.”

“Scratch any of them and you’re sure to find it,” said Mrs. Garfunkel.

“Ah, well,” said Mrs. Elkin. “But it certainly was funny,” she added, in a voice velveted over now with a certain savor of reminiscence, “the way she kept
insisting.
”

“Uh-huh,” said Mrs. Garfunkel rather flatly. “Yeah. Sure.”

Someone came out on the back porch and vigorously swung the big bell that meant supper in fifteen minutes.

“Care for a little drive in the Buick after supper?” asked Mrs. Garfunkel.

“Why—why, yes,” said Mrs. Elkin, her tones warmer now with the generosity of one whose equipment went beyond the realm of bargains. “Why, I think that would be very nice.”

“Any time,” said Mrs. Garfunkel. “Any time you want stamps or anything. Thought you might enjoy a little ride. Not having the use of a car.”

The chairs scraped back, the screen door creaked, and the two voices, linked in their sudden, dubious rapprochement, went inside. The scuffling toy followed them.

Hester rolled herself out of the hammock and stood up. She looked for comfort at the reasonable hills, whose pattern changed only according to what people ate; at the path, down which there was nothing more ambiguous than the hazel-eyed water or the flower that should be scarlet but was orange. While she had been in the hammock, the dusk had covered them over. It had settled over everything with its rapt, misleading veil.

She walked around to the foot of the front steps. A thin, emery edge of autumn was in the air now. Inside, they must all be at supper; no one else had come by. When she walked into the dining room, they would all lift their heads for a moment, the way they always did when someone walked in late, all of them regarding her for just a minute with their equivocal adult eyes. Something would rise from them all like a warning odor, confusing and corrupt, and she knew now what it was. Miss Onderdonk sat at their table, too. Wherever any of them sat publicly at table, Miss Onderdonk sat at his side. Only, some of them set a place for her and some of them did not.

T
HEY ALL CAME ALONG
with Eleanor and her baby in the cab to Grand Central, her father and mother on either side of her, her father holding the wicker bassinet on his carefully creased trousers. Rosalie and Helene, her cousins, smart in their fall ensembles, just right for the tingling October dusk, sat in the two little seats opposite them. Aunt Ruth, Dr. Ruth Brinn, her father’s sister and no kin to the elegant distaff cousins, had insisted on sitting in front with the cabman. Eleanor could see her now, through the glass, in animated talk, her hat tilted piratically on her iron-gray braids.

Leaning forward, Eleanor studied the dim, above-eye-level picture of the driver. A sullen-faced young man, with a lock of black hair belligerent over his familiar nondescript face: “Manny Kaufman.” What did Manny Kaufman think of Dr. Brinn? In ten minutes she would drag his life history from him, answering his unwilling statements with the snapping glance, the terse nods which showed that she got it all, at once, understood him down to the bone. At the end of her cross-questioning she would be quite capable of saying, “Young man, you are too pale! Get another job!”

“I certainly don’t know why you wanted to wear that get-up,” said Eleanor’s mother, as the cab turned off the Drive toward Broadway. “On a train. And with the baby to handle, all alone.” She brushed imaginary dust from her lap, scattering disapproval with it. She had never had to handle her babies alone.

Eleanor bent over the basket before she answered. She was a thin fair girl whom motherhood had hollowed, rather than enhanced. Tucking the bottle-bag further in, feeling the wad of diapers at the bottom, she envied the baby blinking solemnly up at her, safe in its surely serviced world.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she said. “It just felt gala. New Yorkish. Some people dress down for a trip. Others dress up—like me.” Staring at her own lap, though, at the bronze velveteen which had been her wedding dress, sensing the fur blob of hat insecure on her unprofessionally waved hair, shifting the shoes, faintly scuffed, which had been serving her for best for two years, she felt the sickening qualm, the frightful inner blush of the inappropriately dressed.

In front of her, half-turned toward her, the two cousins swayed neatly in unison, two high-nostriled gazelles, one in black, one in brown, both in pearls, wearing their propriety, their utter rightness, like skin. She had known her own excess when she had dressed for the trip yesterday morning, in the bare rooms, after the van had left, but her suits were worn, stretched with wearing during pregnancy, and nothing went with anything any more. Tired of house dresses, of the spotted habiliments of maternity, depressed with her three months’ solitude in the country waiting out the lease after Dan went on to the new job, she had reached for the wedding clothes, seeing herself cleansed and queenly once more, mysterious traveler whose appearance might signify anything, approaching the pyrrhic towers of New York, its effervescent terminals, with her old brilliance, her old style.

Her father sighed. “Wish that boy could find a job nearer New York.”

“You know an engineer has to go where the plants are,” she said, weary of the old argument. “It’s not like you—with your own business and everything. Don’t you think I’d like …?” She stopped, under Rosalie’s bright, tallying stare.

“I know, I know.” He leaned over the baby, doting.

“What’s your new house like?” said Rosalie.

“You know,” she said gaily, “after all Dan’s letters, I’m not just sure, except that it’s part of a two-family. They divide houses every which way in those towns. He’s written about ‘Bostons,’ and ‘flats,’ and ‘duplexes.’ All I really know is it has automatic heat, thank goodness, and room for the piano.” She clamped her lips suddenly on the hectic, chattering voice. Why had she had to mention the piano, especially since they were just passing Fifty-seventh Street, past Carnegie with all its clustering satellites—the Pharmacy, the Playhouse, the Russian restaurant—and in the distance, the brindled windows of the galleries, the little chiffoned store fronts, spitting garnet and saffron light? All her old life smoked out toward her from these buildings, from this parrot-gay, music-scored street.

“Have you been able to keep up with your piano?” Helene’s head cocked, her eyes screened.

“Not—not recently. But I’m planning a schedule. After we’re settled.” In the baby’s nap time, she thought. When I’m not boiling formulas or wash. In the evenings, while Dan reads, if I’m only—just not too tired. With a constriction, almost of fear, she realized that she and Dan had not even discussed whether the family on the other side of the house would mind the practicing. That’s how far I’ve come away from it, she thought, sickened.

“All that time spent.” Her father stroked his chin with a scraping sound and shook his head, then moved his hand down to brace the basket as the cab swung forward on the green light.

My time, she thought, my life—your money, knowing her unfairness in the same moment, knowing it was only his devotion, wanting the best for her, which deplored. Or, like her mother, did he mourn too the preening pride in the accomplished daughter, the long build-up, Juilliard, the feverish, relative-ridden Sunday afternoon recitals in Stengel’s studio, the program at Town Hall, finally, with her name, no longer Eleanor Goldman, but Elly Gold, truncated hopefully, euphoniously for the professional life to come, that had already begun to be, thereafter, in the first small jobs, warm notices?

As the cab rounded the corner of Fifth, she saw two ballerinas walking together, unmistakable with their dark Psyche knots over their fichus, their sandaled feet angled outwards, the peculiar compensating tilt of their little strutting behinds. In that moment it was as if she had taken them all in at once, seen deep into their lives. There was a studio of them around the hall from Stengel’s, and under the superficial differences the atmosphere in the two studios had been much the same: two tight, concentric worlds whose
aficionados
bickered and endlessly discussed in their separate argots, whose students, glowing with the serious work of creation, were like trajectories meeting at the burning curve of interest.

She looked at the cousins with a dislike close to envy, because they neither burned nor were consumed. They would never throw down the fixed cards. Conformity would protect them. They would marry for love if they could; if not, they would pick, prudently, a candidate who would never remove them from the life to which they were accustomed. Mentally they would never even leave Eighty-sixth Street, and their homes would be like their mothers’, like her mother’s,
bibelots
suave on the coffee tables, bonbon dishes full, but babies postponed until they could afford to have them born at Doctors Hospital. “After all the money Uncle Harry spent on her, too,” they would say later in mutually confirming gossip. For to them she would simply have missed out on the putative glory of the prima donna; that it was the work she missed would be out of their ken.

The cab swung into the line of cars at the side entrance to Grand Central. Eleanor bent over the basket and took out the baby. “You take the basket, Dad.” Then, as if forced by the motion of the cab, she reached over and thrust the bundle of baby onto Helene’s narrow brown crepe lap, and held it there until Helene grasped it diffidently with her suede gloves.

“She isn’t—she won’t wet, will she?” said Helene.

A porter opened the door. Eleanor followed her mother and father out and then reached back into the cab. “I’ll take her now.” She stood there hugging the bundle, feeling it close, a round comforting cyst of love and possession.

Making her way through the snarled mess of traffic on the curb, Aunt Ruth came and stood beside her. “Remember what I told you!” she called to the departing driver, wagging her finger at him.

“What did you tell him?” said Eleanor.

“Huh! What I told him!” Her aunt shrugged, the blunt Russian shrug of inevitability, her shrewd eyes ruminant over the outthrust chin, the spread hands. “Can I fix life? Life in Brooklyn on sixty dollars a week? I’m only a medical doctor!” She pushed her hat forward on her braids. “Here! Give me that baby!” She whipped the baby from Eleanor’s grasp and held it with authority, looking speculatively at Eleanor. “Go on! Walk ahead with them!” She grinned. “Don’t I make a fine nurse? Expensive, too!”

Down at the train, Eleanor stood at the door of the roomette while the other women, jammed inside, divided their ardor for the miniature between the baby and the telescoped comforts of the cubicle. At the end of the corridor, money and a pantomime of cordiality passed between her father and the car porter. Her father came back down the aisle, solid gray man, refuge of childhood, grown shorter than she. She stared down at his shoulder, rigid, her eyes unfocused, restraining herself from laying her head upon it.

“All taken care of,” he said. “He’s got the formula in the icebox and he’ll take care of getting you off in the morning. Wish you could have stayed longer, darling.” He pressed an envelope into her hand. “Buy yourself something. Or the baby.” He patted her shoulder. “No …… now never mind now. This is between you and me.”

“Guess we better say good-bye, dear,” said her mother, emerging from the roomette with the others. Doors slammed, passengers swirled around them. They kissed in a circle, nibbling and diffident.

Aunt Ruth did not kiss her, but took Eleanor’s hands and looked at her, holding on to them. She felt her aunt’s hands moving softly on her own. The cousins watched brightly.

“What’s this, what’s this?” said her aunt. She raised Eleanor’s hands, first one, then the other, as if weighing them in a scale, rubbed her own strong, diagnostic thumb back and forth over Eleanor’s right hand, looking down at it. They all looked down at it. It was noticeably more spatulate, coarser-skinned than the left, and the middle knuckles were thickened.