To-morrow Morning (Parrish)/Chapter 20
"IT'S just pick up, pick up, pick up after her all day long," Kate said, pushing the roses into the wire holder. "Cigarette ashes everywhere. I used to think Joe was bad enough, but Evelyn! And I don't believe she's ever shut a book after she's been reading it. She leaves them face down all over the house, or out on the grass under the lilac bush. Of course, I don't say anything; they're mostly Joe's, and if he doesn't care I'm sure I don't—but you know that certainly isn't any way to treat books!"
Charlotte glanced at her own neat rows, sets of George Eliot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shakespeare, O. Henry, wedding-present Emerson, wedding-present Washington Irving, their backs still stiff, their pages stuck together, The Child's Book of Knowledge, all caged behind glass.
"No, you should use them, not abuse them."
"Look, Charlotte! If I do say so myself, this bowl is pretty sweet!"
Charlotte paused from admiration of her own floral arrangement and looked at Kate's.
"Yes, indeed, it is pretty, Aunt Kate. Thank you very much."
"Yours are lovely, Charlotte!"
"Oh, not as pretty as yours!
"Nonsense! The ones on the dining-room table are simply perfect. I do think it's sweet of you to do this for Evelyn. She would have come over to help, but Hartley Harrison came to take her to look at another house."
"I should think it would be quite a relief to you when they found one."
"It will be, Charlotte! Of course it'll pretty nearly break my heart to have Joe go. . . . This bottom's wet; I don't want to put it on the mahogany. Have you a cloth? . . . But he might as well not be home now as far as I see anything of him. Evelyn simply absorbs him. You know I simply couldn't try to get him to pay attention to me, and she does, so naturally— Ouch! Those thorns are sharp! But I don't know what it's going to be like when she's keeping house, Charlotte, I certainly don't. I mean, if you could see the way their room looks—powder over everything, and her clothes anywhere, on the chairs, on the floor, any old way, and the door wide open so anyone can see. . . . Don't you think this is prettier without any asparagus? I do. . . . Still, it'll give her something to do. She seems just about bored to death all the time Joe's away, though goodness knows everyone's being as cordial as anything. I must say she hasn't been feeling very well."
"Do you think maybe?"
"March, April, May—I don't know. Well, if you're sure that's all I can do I'll run along home and get dressed."
"I don't suppose Aunt Sarah'll care to come, will she?"
"Oh no, I hardly think so. Of course, she just might take a notion, but she hardly notices anything these days, just sits sort of whispering to herself; sometimes it makes me feel creepy. Well, Evelyn and I'll be here by four—oh, and Carrie, of course."
Carrie leaned over the stairs as Kate came in the door. Her face glistened with cold cream; her head was knobby with curling-kids.
"Hey-o, lady love! I was deddid' worried, wif bofe the ladies oud gaddid'."
"I didn't mean to stay so long, but I was helping Charlotte with the flowers. She has this ridiculous idea that no one can do them like me; it's perfectly absurd. Isn't Evelyn home yet? She ought to be."
She stepped into their empty room and began picking up snowed underclothes, blue chiffon printed with soft red poppies and scented with amber. Outlandish!
"Look at this dress, Carrie! And I know it's the one she intends to wear this afternoon! Well, I'll just have to press it out for her, and I simply haven't a second."
"Could'd I do id, Kade?"
"No, I'll just have to." She gave a loud, exasperated sigh. "How's your cold?"
"I thig id's bedder, thag you. I've beed sbellig cabphor. Adyway, I'b goig; I jusd could'd bear to biss id. Bud loog ad by dose, Kade; id's as red as fire, ad every dibe I powder id I have do blow id agaid."
Kate banged down the ironing board, flung Evelyn's dress across it. But as the creases came smooth under the iron, her frown smoothed. She no longer felt inferior, dowdy, and unsophisticated, "old Mrs. Green." She was kind Kate, helping Evelyn.
When she carried the dress upstairs Evelyn was lying on the bed, her skirt crumpled under her, her shoes right on the nice white counterpane.
"Evelyn! Do you know what time it is?"
"Oh, Mrs. Green, do I have to go?"
"Why, of course! The guest of honor! We ought to be half-way there now. Don't you feel well, dear?"
She did look white; the shadows around her eyes were deeper than usual; her dark hair was pressed to her damp forehead in a way somehow touching and childlike, so that Kate suddenly, shyly, stooped and kissed her. Evelyn caught her hand.
"Mrs. Green, you've pressed my dress for me!"
"Oh, that was nothing, dear."
"You're sweet to me. Let's not go to the tea. Let's stay here and have tea in the kitchen together."
"Now hop up, goosie! Call me if you need any help."
And she went smiling to struggle into her dress—oh, bother, another hair net gone—to work her fingers into her new white gloves, seeing herself and Evelyn girls together.
Mrs. Driggs took them in her limousine, driven by Noble in a chauffeur's cap, but no puttees. Artificial orchids quivered in a cut-glass vase; there was a clock that didn't go, an empty vinaigrette, a cigarette lighter that wouldn't light. "By, this is luxury!" Carrie sighed, trying not to blow her nose until she got to Charlotte's.
Already there were heaps of wraps on the twin beds. A three-piece orchestra was playing under the stairs. Charlotte's friends in beaded evening gowns were passing things, besides two colored waiters and Charlotte's own Winnie and Theresa. Pink tulips; pink rosebuds, some of them wilting in the heat, dropping their heads like wounded swans; long trails of asparagus fern; the sharp pink noses of the candles beginning to run; cakes in frilled paper bonnets; sandwiches rolled and tied with bows of white satin baby ribbon, like dolls' diplomas. Salad, frappé, fruit punch, everything but tea. A faint smell of gasoline from two-thirds of the town's white gloves, of coffee, dying roses, in air quivering with noise and heat. People who generally came only to weddings and funerals had come to meet Joe Green's bride. Yellowed ermine neckpieces; yellowed Roman pearls; hats high on gray pompadours; best dresses that looked as if they had been worn in the rain and then slept in. It was hot; pulses beat fast and noses began to glisten. There was an emphasized beat through the uproar of vague emphatic cordiality: Howda do why Mrs. Robinson how well you're looking aren't the flowers lovely have you met the bride isn't she attractive have you had some frappé how nice to see you my dear it's been ages aren't the flowers lovely isn't she attractive so nice to have seen you I think a little coffee I must speak to Kate Green well where've you been hiding just a little frappé isn't the bride attractive can her pearls be real my dear isn't it hot just a little frappé
And after that the tidal wave of parties broke over Evelyn. Lunches where young mothers talked about Dicky being an absolute angel, but Patricia being a perfect little imp of darkness, my dear; about whether Nantucket was a good place for the children; about smocking on little dresses. "Don't you love it? Oh, Ellen, what a precious little dress—oh, my dear, I simply love it!" Pretty sitting rooms with wedding-present lamps and etchings; pretty young matrons taking a few dainty stitches in baby clothes between coffee and bridge. "Maids, my dear—Barbara Tuttle has had five different cooks in one month" Maids! And they were off, until it was time for a discreet changing of the subject as the waitress came in for the empty coffee cups.
Little Priscillas and Anthonys came in to say how do you do to mother's friends, with an eye on the chocolates; good fat babies were passed around, wrapped in shell-pink knitted blankets, rolling their eyes, waving curled pink hands, abstractedly blowing bubbles. "An-i-ta Potter! I never saw anything so absolutely adorable! Did you ever see anything so perfectly darling? Yes, she was a perfect darling! Look at those fat cheeks! She's the image of you, Anita."
"Oh, my dear, no! She has Paul's eyes absolutely."
The dinners weren't so bad, for Joe was at them, to send her silent messages, to stroll home with along quiet evening streets, talking things over.
"Oh, Joe! I can't stand being bored this way much longer!"
"They want to be nice to you, darling."
"Oh, I know—but Joe! Don't they ever get tired of prohibition jokes? And all the dinners start in such an uproar from the cocktails, and then slowly die of ice water, and yet everyone keeps on screaming—that pumped-up gayety"
"Well, we can't sit around weeping silently."
"Why not? It wouldn't be any sadder, really."
"Last night didn't start noisily with cocktails."
"No, that was even worse. That butler with puffed alpaca sleeves, sighing down everybody's neck, and everything so rich and Christian. Do you know what we ladies did before you gentlemen joined us? We listened to the radio, and do you know what we heard? How to tell if you have heart disease, and then a talk on storage batteries."
"Evelyn, darling, you're a liar and I love you."
They kissed quickly in a shower of shadow thrown by are light and maple tree. Everything was all right when they were together. But other dinners floated from the past to Evelyn, footmen moving quietly, guests who knew there was a world outside of Westlake. She suddenly thought of Ralph Levinson.
"Have a good time?" Kate asked her one afternoon when she came home from a bridge tea given in her honor. "Fourteen and twenty-nine and three fives are fifteen, that makes fifty-six—you have to watch Turben's bills like a hawk. There! Now tell me all about it."
Evelyn collapsed on the sofa, dropping her hat on the floor.
"I was so bored all afternoon I nearly fainted," she said.
"Dorothy wanted to be nice—they all do, because they used to play with Joe when they were children."
"Oh, I know. It's very kind of them."
She sighed, turning her head from side to side. She was trapped. She could never get away. Joe said things would be all right when they were in a house by themselves, but nothing ever changed, really. She had thought that to be married to Joe would be perfect happiness. Well, now she was married to Joe.
"They used to have such good times together—such goings-on! Did I ever show you the old photograph album? Goodness! how dusty! Wait till I get a cloth. You mustn't smudge that pretty dress. There! There's Joe when he was a baby—cunning thing! Here he is in his little sailor suit—his hair always would stick up in the back; it does still."
Evelyn smiled, comforted by the thought of that ridiculous plume of hair.
"Hoagland took some of these with his Brownie kodak. That was Lizzie( a girl we had, and old Shep, Jodie's dog—that was a year the sweet peas were marvelous. You can see them in the background. He looks awful in this one, poor little fellow; it was just before he had measles."
"What's this picture?"
"We had a Masque of the Months in the studio, and Joe's father had a photographer to take the children. See, here's Jodie; he was the New Year, in his pink flannel pajamas, and I made him pink crêpe paper wings; he was the youngest of all. Here's Charlotte as October. I made her that sort of tunic out of orange cheesecloth, with a purple evening cape I had, and apples and grapes on the crumb tray"
"Who's this?"
"Jimmy Roberts. He's awfully prosperous now; he married this one, Gladys Blunt."
"Oh, I know. Bridge party last Friday."
"Yes, of course. See, he has a gilt paper crown; he was January, King of the Revels"
"What is that he's holding over his head? It can't be"
"Oh no, Evelyn; that's our old soup tureen without its cover—the very same one we keep string and things in on the kitchen dresser. It's supposed to be a wassail bowl."
"Who's this darling little boy in a bathing suit?"
"That's Laddie Baylow—he was August. He was shell-shocked in the war, but they thought he was all right, and then one day he just walked out of the house and they've never seen him since. Isn't it awful? They don't know whether he's alive or dead—at least, everybody thinks he must be dead except his poor mother; she thinks he'll just come walking in any minute. You know she turns down his bed every night, and keeps a plate of apples up in his room, and she'll hardly leave the house. Poor Mr. Baylow can hardly get her out for ten minutes, she's so afraid of not being there when Laddie comes home; she's just stretched tight all the time. It really would be better if she knew he was dead, than to go on hoping against hope this way."
"Oh no! Oh, people must keep hoping! Even if you know that hope is empty, you can't stop."
They looked at the picture again. Happiness for this child, sorrow for this one, yet nothing to tell which was coming, in the round faces. If one could have been ahead, and done something
"Don't you miss having the studio to work in?"
"Oh, Evelyn, I do! Sometimes I want to paint so I think I'll burst! I'm going to get at it again, sometime, too, if ever I'm not quite so busy."
"I've never seen any of your pictures, except the saucepan and onions and that little sketch of Joe."
"Would you care to? Really? Now, don't think you have to be polite. I have some things hidden away in the studio, and Aunt Sarah's out driving with Charlotte. They aren't anything very marvelous, but my teachers used to say they had a lot of promise. Carrie! I guess she's out, too. My, Aunt Sarah keeps this place shut up! I expect she'll die if she ever finds I've had a window open. I'm afraid these'll be pretty dusty"
She pulled out the old canvases.
"This was a girl called Nellie Verlaine
"This is just a sketch, sunset over the water
"I never finished this
"Listen! Wasn't that the front door? Run and see if it's Aunt Sarah!"
"No, it's Joe! Come upstairs, Joseph; we're having an art exhibition."
"Oh, Joe, darling! I guess you'll think I'm crazy! I was just showing Evelyn some of my old pictures"
Two spots of red burned in her cheeks; stars shone in her eyes; her voice was breathless. All about her, propped against walls and chair legs, were her paintings—dead fish, flowers, two lemons and a brown jug with a high light. Nellie Verlaine in Grecian costume. For the first time Joe really saw them. And he could hardly bear that even his Evelyn should see. He loved Kate so; he felt so fiercely protective. He was glad for her that life had kept her from her painting and so not taken away her illusion.