Up a Road Slowly (11 page)

“But Mother always—” I began in a rather severe tone, and then stopped myself.

Alicia smiled at me. “I know, Julie, I know very well how you feel. But your mother and I were very good friends. She would want me to arrange the house to my taste, I feel quite sure.”

Well, I wondered! But it was a little thing. Later I told Alicia that the mirror did, indeed, look nice in the dining room and she seemed pleased.

After we had removed the mirror, it was plain that the walls needed redecorating, and when they were done in a beautiful French gray, Alicia confided in me that she was going to be profligate and buy the outrageously expensive draperies that she had long wanted. We had a wonderful time selecting them together, and it was pleasant to find that our tastes were quite similar. We bought a heavy tapestry the color of the walls but brightened by great irregular splashes of cerise, a bold color that delighted both of us.

We were all quite pleased with the effect in the living room, but when the kitchen was done over, and the old dining table under which Chris and I used to hide and pinch Father's ankles while he dined was discarded in favor of one very smart and modern, I felt as if this were no longer my home. I got a lonely feeling in it, although I had to admit that it was beautiful.

But it was Laura's room that mattered most. Somehow, it had never entered my mind that this room would be other than mine. It had belonged to me in every dream that I'd had of coming home; later I thought how strange it is that your dreams can be so real as to make you sure that other people are aware of them too.

I seemed to feel faint warnings of a deeper shock to come when, on one weekend visit, I found that Alicia had had Mother's old flower garden put to sod so that it stretched out as a continuation of the green lawn.

“Don't you think it makes the lawn lovelier, Julie?” Alicia asked, apparently certain that I would agree with her. “The garden hasn't really been carefully tended for so long and was actually getting very shabby. If either your father or I had green thumbs—but we don't. Neither green thumbs, nor time for gardening, if we're to get term papers and final examinations graded.”

“Yes, I think it's an improvement—I do, really, Alicia.” I tried to make my voice enthusiastic, but my dream was beginning to be upset. The view of the flower garden from Laura's window was part of the memory I wanted back.

Later, Alicia wanted to show me what she had been doing to the rooms upstairs. That's when I saw Laura's room.

The white curtains were gone, and draperies of coarsely woven cloth in blue and copper were at the windows. The shell-pink walls had become beige and gold, and a thick beige carpet covered the floor which Laura had always left bare with fluffy white throw-rugs here and there. The pink and white bed was gone too, and the only furnishings in the room were a massive walnut desk with a special niche for a typewriter, a few straight chairs, and several bookshelves against the walls.

“My home office,” Alicia said with a pleased sigh. “Your father has the library—I insisted that he keep it to himself; up here I'll wield my red pencil over high school themes and when I finally explode, at least I'll do it in privacy. I'd hate for you or your father to see me when I begin pulling my hair—”

I couldn't keep from wailing, “Oh, Alicia,
what
have you done?”

She was amazed. “But, Julie, your father told me that this was Laura's room—not yours. I'm having your own little room all done over with a matching desk and bookcase and draperies that I think are the loveliest. I thought I'd be making you so happy—I didn't dream—”

Well, there were reassurances and apologies and more reassurances until finally I convinced Alicia that I was, of course, delighted with my old room and that she should never think of my outburst again. Everything was settled, but that night we were a little quieter than usual at our meal, and Alicia and Father glanced at one another as if they were thinking that it certainly was too much of a chore for Aunt Cordelia to look after a girl of my age; that they saw it as being something of a problem even for themselves.

During the next few weeks everything went smoothly; then one morning I came downstairs in my house slippers and walked into the breakfast nook without their hearing me. It really wasn't anything—just a recently married husband and wife giving one another an exceptionally warm embrace and good-morning kiss. Nothing wrong with that, but it was their surprise, their sudden standing apart with a half-embarrassed, half-irritated look that struck me full force. I said, “Oh, excuse me,” and they said, “Not at all, dear,” and we all laughed a little, and they poked a bit of fun at themselves for romancing before breakfast.

But the experience left a strange feeling inside me; it wasn't the jealousy I had felt at Laura's, for I certainly wasn't trying to stand in the Number One place with either Alicia or Father. It was, rather, the feeling that I didn't belong anywhere—not in a house that was no longer my old home but a beautiful, strange place where I might at any moment invade the privacy of two people very much in love; not at Aunt Cordelia's if it was true that I had become a burden to her.

I went out from town on the rickety old bus that passed within a mile of home that afternoon. It seemed strange that I should think of Aunt Cordelia's place as “home”; always before it was the house in town that had been closest in my affection. But as I walked the dusty mile from the bus-stop to the old house in the woods I thought about my room at Aunt Cordelia's with more warmth than I ever had before. It was twice as large as my old one in town, and while the furnishings were old, they were mellow and held more significance for me than did the desk and bookcase that Alicia had selected for me. Aunt Cordelia and I had worked together refinishing my bureau, a walnut one that had been old even when she was a child; I knew how much sanding and rubbing and polishing had been necessary to bring out the beauty of the fine wood. It suddenly seemed to me that I couldn't bear to give up my beautiful old furniture for the glossy new things that should have been giving me so much happiness.

I wondered, too, how it would seem waking up of a morning and being unable to look out at the woods, my beloved woods that were hardly the same two days in succession. There would be a veil of fog one morning, and bright sunlight or gray rain the next; there would be snowy branches, or little, tender, new leaves, or colorful autumn ones—always a new picture to put away in my memory. I wanted my woods as I wanted my big room and my old bureau. I wanted, too, the freedom of the old house where I could run through the many rambling, high-ceilinged rooms singing if I cared to sing, exploring some ancient trunk or nook or closet that I had missed, never wondering if I were going to startle two persons burdened with someone like me in too small a house. For the first time, I was conscious of Aunt Cordelia's home as a haven, and I wanted desperately to know that I was welcome there.

Uncle Haskell called to me as I walked up the long driveway. “Well, Julie, my sweet, are you happy at the prospect of shaking the dust of this estate from your little feet?”

I linked my arm in his, and we walked on up the path without my answering. Uncle Haskell seldom noticed whether one replied to his remarks or not; he was interested only in his own voice.

“And how are the impeccable Adam and his beautiful bride?” he asked maliciously.

“Quite well. Not wholly impeccable, but they're both very nice people,” I answered.

He bent down suddenly and looked into my face. “Come to think of it, you look a bit drawn, my pet. What is it? Were you pushed a little backstage away from the footlights?”

I thought, “That is
your
idea of pain, isn't it, dear Uncle?” But I said, “There's not a thing wrong except for that old bus and the ghastly heat.” And then I changed the subject. “How is the magnum opus coming along?”

“Beautifully,” he answered, smiling blandly and without the slightest embarrassment or anger. “Magnificently, really. I'm very pleased—so much so that I think I'll go out for a spot of twilight golf this evening. One must relax a bit, you know.”

“Of course,” I agreed, going along with the time-honored hokum. “Have a good game.” We smiled at one another and parted at the end of the lane. Uncle Haskell and I had a tepid sort of liking for one another.

The drawn look that he had noticed in my face must very well have been evident, for as Aunt Cordelia and I sat in the living room that evening, she looked at me in her direct way and plunged into my anxiety bluntly.

“Tell me all about it, Julia,” she said without prelude.

I had not told her about the little things that had bothered me, the mirror and especially Laura's room. They seemed to show up a childishness in me that I didn't like. But the breakfast-nook incident was different; it pointed up their discomfiture as well as mine. I tried to show in my telling of it that I held no rancor, only a sense of insecurity, of loneliness.

Aunt Cordelia nodded when I was through. “I think I understand how you feel, though I believe that you have misinterpreted Adam and Alicia. It's unfortunate that in our culture, where the accent is so much upon youth, that people of middle age feel awkward and absurd if they demonstrate their love. They feel that they're playing a role that belongs to nobody over thirty. I'd guess that is how your parents felt this morning—a kind of embarrassment rather than annoyance.”

I thought for a while. “I'm egotistical, isn't that it, Aunt Cordelia? And egotistical people are supersensitive, aren't they?”

Aunt Cordelia smiled. “In a few years you'll love someone, Julia, and it will make a great difference in you. You'll see. A woman is never completely developed until she has loved a man; when that happens in the right way she is happy in other people's love as well as her own; she is more generous and understanding about the feelings of others. You might say that she knows completeness.”

Then I asked a question that I shouldn't have, one that might well have brought me a rebuff, although it didn't.

“Did you feel that completeness the year—the first year you taught, Aunt Cordelia?”

I was immediately full of consternation at having asked the question, but to my surprise, she answered me readily.

“Yes,” she said, “I did.”

We were silent for a while, during which time my worry over a home came uppermost in my thoughts.

“AmIapain in the neck, Aunt Cordelia?” I asked finally.

She came quickly from the “woman who had known completeness” to the spinsterish schoolteacher. “I dislike that expression very much, Julia; it is flippant and in poor taste. However, I fully understand your meaning, of course. No, you are neither troublesome nor an annoyance to me.”

“I thought that maybe I was getting to an age where I am too great a responsibility,” I quoted.

“I never said that. Laura and Adam and Alicia decided that.”

“You wouldn't mind if I stayed here then—if I lived with you while I'm in high school. I'll try to be mature, Aunt Cordelia, honestly I'll try. I don't want to be a burden, but when you get down to brass tacks, this is
home
so far as I'm concerned.”

Aunt Cordelia closed her eyes for a second and shook her head ever so slightly. But she was smiling as she made the gesture; I had never seen her look like that before.

“If you choose to stay with me, Julia, I shall be much, much happier this fall than I had expected to be. You have come to seem like my own child, and I haven't wanted to think of what it would be like this winter with no girl coming in from school, no young mind to guide—” She stopped then, apparently troubled. “How are Adam and Alicia going to feel about this, Julia? They've been expecting you, getting things ready for you. Are they going to feel hurt?”

My spirit was soaring. I would be a part of the old, the familiar. The roots that I had put down during the past six years need not be disturbed. I could be realistic about Father and Alicia without pain; they would welcome me, of course, if I moved into town, but they wouldn't suffer any sharp agony if I only came in for an occasional weekend. And that was all right. Don't try to get into the Number One place, my girl. Father and Alicia had as much right to their privacy as had Laura and Bill. Anyway, I had Aunt Cordelia.

“I'll make them understand.” I tried to put into words the feeling I had for Father and Alicia: “I like them very much, Aunt Cordelia; I admire them too, but it's as if they are sort of holiday parents. Everything is just fine and new and beautiful; we're all polite and careful of one another's feelings. But they'll just have to understand: you and I are closer.”

Aunt Cordelia sat very straight in her chair for a long time without speaking. Then she said quite casually, “Well, I suppose we'd better get to our beds. Be sure to hang your dress up properly, Julia; you left some of your things lying about the room when you left for the weekend.”

It was cool and quiet and wonderful in my room. I lay in the wide old bed between my two windows, and looked up at the stars which were thick above the trees that night. This was home, this was contentment, a warm and good contentment in spite of the fact that I knew in winter the room would be icy and I'd have to leap downstairs to dress beside one of the big stoves, in spite of the fact that I would not be one of the town clique and so would probably have fewer beaux, in spite of the fact that I knew there would be altercation between Aunt Cordelia and me. It didn't matter. Here on the wall were the bookshelves that my grandfather had made for Aunt Cordelia when she was young; out in the stable there was Peter the Great, getting old, but still showing his blood; there were the country roads and the woods; there was good old Danny down the road, and silly little Carlotta.