“Mommy,” said Sally, thumping crazily on her dish with her spoon, “Daddy, Nannie, Kitty, Mommy, Okay, Goodbye, cookie?”
Jannie sang softly, in a minor counterpoint, “Sally’s bottom is dry as a fly, so goodbye, my peekaboo Sally.”
Sally had consumed her chicken and her potatoes and was eating her peas one by one with her fingers, Jannie was daintily making designs in her potatoes with the back of her spoon, Laurie waved a chicken leg at his father and said vigorously, “say, listen, you know what’s funny?” I was remembering the time the waitress backed into Laurie’s spurs; sooner or later, I suppose, there must be in every mother’s life the inevitable moment when she has to take two small children shopping in one big store. Although I keep telling myself that Laurie and Jannie are not more undisciplined, less poised, than any other two children of their age, I could not, for anything in the world, take them into public view again. Jannie had needed shoes, and Laurie some kind of trousers, made of any material on the order of sheet iron, to wear to school, where apparently the second-graders amuse themselves during the long weary days by cutting holes in one another’s clothes with scissors. I felt, erroneously, that it was preferable to buy Jannie’s shoes and Laurie’s pants in a large department store in the nearest city, rather than relying so entirely upon our small local stores, and it seemed to me that I should have the children with me to try things on. I have tried buying shoes for children with an outline of the child’s foot traced on paper, but it is never completely satisfactory, aside from the pleasure the child gets out of having his foot traced.
It was a Wednesday morning when I assembled the children, Laurie having been kept home from school because I had a faint idea that Wednesday was the day when the stores were least crowded. I have no idea what persuaded me that the stores were going to be least crowded on Wednesday, although, as it turned out, it hardly mattered, since my children proved to be able to assemble a crowd at any given time on any given day.
We all looked very nice when we started out. Jannie was wearing her best dark red coat, with high blue stockings and a blue beret. Laurie was wearing his suit, which was a little too small for him, his dark blue tie, his spurs, and two pearl-handled revolvers, although I took a firm stand on his not loading them with caps. I was wearing a gray fur coat and the low-heeled shoes which I ordinarily wear around the house, but which I chose to wear shopping this day because low heels seemed more practical for the broken field running I expected to be doing. I had also, with rare good sense, stripped for action in that I carried absolutely nothing—no pocketbook, no gloves, no hat. I assumed, and correctly, that I was going to need all the hands I could get. I had my money in a little purse in my pocket, which I kept feeling nervously to make sure it was still there. I had left simple instructions for my husband on care of Sally (“if she cries, ignore her, unless she seems to be crying because she’s in trouble—you’ll be sure to recognize the difference—or else she might be crying because she’s dropped her little suitcase out of the crib and wants you to pick it up, but be sure not to let her have the doll in the blue dress because its arm is broken and if she wants a drink make her take the half-glass of milk in the left-hand lower corner of the refrigerator because that’s what she left from breakfast and if she goes in the playpen—”) and he had given each of the older children a dime.
We sailed off in fine style, as far as the front door, where Jannie flatly declined to move further unless allowed to take along her doll carriage and doll. There was a violent argument; I took the always-losing position of “Either the doll stays home or you do,” and Laurie swung on the knob of the front door saying “Come on, let’s go.” We got the doll carriage into a bus, finally, and all the way into town Jannie bent over it, crooning to her doll about how no one was going to leave sweet dolly at home while Jannie had anything to say about it; Laurie shot people from the bus window with his pearl-handled revolvers. I made rapid and inaccurate mental calculations about the probable price of lunch and the cost of transporting the doll carriage in taxis. Fortunately, my shopping list was simple: J. shoes; L. pants, and if I did happen to be anywhere near a suit department I might take a look at dark suits, the simple kind they don’t seem to make any more.
“Move over,” Jannie said to me, “you’re sitting on Linda.”
“Linda’s not coming?” I said incredulously.
“Certainly she’s coming,” Jannie said, “and you’re sitting on her.”
“You and your old girls,” Laurie said, drawing in his head and pointing his gun. “There, I shot her.”
A crisis was averted at that moment because the bus stopped in front of the department store where I fondly believed they had shoes in Jannie’s size and pants in Laurie’s strength and suits in my shade of darkness. We got out of the bus, apologizing, and reached the sidewalk without trouble—quite an accomplishment, with the doll carriage, Linda, and Laurie, who remembered his manners at the last minute, and ran back from the sidewalk to hold the door for me after I had already gotten out, leaving Jannie alone and disconsolate, so that she started sadly down the street alone pushing her carriage, with the crowd separating to make a path for her, and one or two old ladies turning to smile and tell one another that she was sweet, and cute, and adorable.
By the time Laurie and I, shouting, had caught up, Jannie and the doll carriage were almost inextricably caught in a revolving door.
I think, every time I step into a department store with my children, surely, I think, it is possible to take children shopping, otherwise, the ten thousand mothers and children surrounding us at this moment are either figments of my imagination, which is perfectly possible, or else actors paid by the store to make itself look busy, which is also perfectly possible, but impractical considering the amount of trade I am likely to bring in with Laurie and Jannie; it must be, I keep telling myself, a simple and wholesome business, to buy one’s children clothes. Doll carriage, revolvers, and all, we got onto the escalator, a machine which I am absolutely convinced is intent upon trapping small unwary feet or, preferably, well-shod maternal feet, and I said, “Careful, children, please.”
“Watch your feet, Linda,” Jannie said repeatedly as we went from the first to the second floor, “watch your feet, Marilyn. Susan, watch your feet.”
I was carrying the doll carriage by then, under my arm; when I recognized the third, and boy’s floor, I said briskly, “All right, we get off here.” Doll carriage under my arm, I alighted and used my free hand to swing Jannie off the escalator. Laurie disembarked with a theatrical gesture which found me leaping backward to catch him before he went along with the escalator to whatever submerged and awful depths it departs; “What’s the matter with you?” Laurie demanded irritably, “scared or something?”
“Linda,” Jannie said anxiously, “watch your step getting off the escalator. Susan, be careful. Linda, jump now; Barbara, help Linda; Marilyn, wait for your turn; Margaret—”
“Jannie,” I said, “please stop. They can get off by themselves.” I was beginning to be aware of a familiar and dreadful feeling: that of being stared at by hordes of people—salesladies, floorwalkers, mothers, immaculate children, and perhaps truant officers. “Come on,” I said nervously, and added just in time, “my dears.”
I put the doll carriage down and Jannie settled herself behind it, hands on the bar, alert and ready to start. “Linda,” she said softly, “all girls, get in line behind me, please.”
“We going to get clothes?” Laurie demanded, looking about him with vast contempt. “I thought you said lunch.”
“A pair of pants for you, dear,” I said sweetly. I was tacking the “dear” onto every sentence I spoke for fear someone should hear me. At this moment, just as our procession was ready to get under way, a large, red-faced man in a rumpled brown suit accosted us. “Madam?” he said inquiringly to me.
He was not a floorwalker, he was certainly not a salesclerk; he might
just possibly have been some cowboy hero in mufti—although in that case he would probably have addressed himself to my son, where he would be assured of at least some comprehension—and he was not, I discovered by feeling at my pocket, a thief. “This little boy buying clothes?” he asked me, gesturing grandly toward Laurie.
“He is,” I said. “Aren’t we, dear?” to Laurie.
“Well, Madam,” the man went on, smiling alternately at me and—with some tentative geniality—at Laurie, “I represent the Real Western Rancho Clothes for Boys Company. We are meeting boys shopping here, talking to them and to their mothers, trying to find out what boys really like in clothes. For instance,” he went on, obviously gaining courage as Laurie and I—not being notoriously quick thinkers—only stared blankly at him, “for instance, here is a boy, I can tell right away, who is lively and full of fun and a real Western Rancho type, right out there with the cowhands at chow time—” he squatted down by Laurie and looked Laurie straight in the eye,—“and this critter here needs real cowpunching duds. Why, I bet this hombre knows a good suit of clothes when he sees it, don’t you pardner?” He gave Laurie’s shoulder a friendly shake. “What’s this?” he demanded, “your shooting iron?”
Laurie stepped back. “It’s a gun,” he said. “You think it was a squirrel or something?”
The man laughed commercially, and I said in warning, “Laurie,” and added, “dear.” “Bright boy,” the man said to me. “Now, come along, pardner, and let this here coyote take your picture.”
“Do what?” said Laurie.
The man laughed again, and tried to give Laurie a little tug over to where another, unhappy-looking man, this one in an ill-fitting cowboy hat, was standing behind a camera, looking as though he would have been more at ease sitting on a corral fence in front of a dry martini; “You’re next, Pancho,” the man in the brown suit said insistently to Laurie.
“Hey,” Laurie said, holding back. I could tell that he had not yet decided upon his final attitude toward this, but I could have told the man a thing or two about getting a firm grip on a boy’s arm (never below the elbow). Jannie, who had wandered off down the aisles, pushing her doll carriage and indicating to Linda, Marilyn, Susan, and the rest various interesting sights they passed, now turned and called to me from the other end of the store, “Mommy, Linda wants you to get her this cowboy hat.”
“Cut it out,” Laurie said, pulling away easily.
“That gun loaded?” said the man, grinning. “You aim to shoot, stranger?”
“What?” said Laurie.
The man looked up at me. “He have TV yet?” he asked.
“Yes,” I said, “but—”
“Well, what we waiting for, fella?” said the man. “Put your picture in the paper,” he said. “All the girls’ll see it.”
Laurie froze. “Girls?” he said. “What girls?”
“Don’t you have a girl friend?” the man said.
“I’m a married man,” Laurie said.
“Laurie,” I said.
“Mommy.” The doll carriage smacked against the backs of my knees. “Mommy,” Jannie said, “I called you and called you and Linda called you too and you didn’t answer me. Who’s that man talking to Laurie?”
She went over close to the man and stared curiously into his face. “Who’re you?” she asked. “Does Mommy know you’re talking to Laurie?”
“M’sister,” Laurie said; perhaps it was the last shred of courtesy left in him, or perhaps he was just terribly afraid that this stranger might think Jannie a girl friend.
“Well,” said the man, “and is this little sister? Do you pull her hair?” he asked Laurie.
“My hair?” said Jannie, and laughed shortly. “And this,” she added, “is Linda, and this is Marilyn, and this is Susan, and this is Barbara, and this is—Margaret? Where is Margaret?”
“Margaret?” said the man in the brown suit.
“Margaret,” Jannie said sharply. She stamped her foot. “Margaret,” she said, “you come here at once. How dare you run away like that? You ought to be spanked right now and here. You bad, bad, bad, bad—”
“Jannie,” I said helplessly, “please don’t scold her. She’s so little.”
“The more reason she should stay with Linda,” Jannie said.
The man in the brown suit, who had been steadily backing away, now rose to his feet and looked long at Laurie and long at Jannie and then, inscrutably, at me. As he turned away, Jannie said, “You can take my picture if you want to, and Linda’s and Marilyn’s and everybody’s but Margaret.”
A large lady accompanied by a young boy swept past me and grabbed the stranger by the arm. “You the man taking pictures in the paper?” she asked. “Look, you the man?”
“I always wear Western Rancho clothes,” said the little boy anxiously; he was wearing a pale blue gabardine suit, with a darker blue shirt and a dark red figured tie, neatly knotted. His shoes were polished, his tie pin glittered. His nails, I could see, were clean, as were his ears. He was wearing a neat cap, which he took off when he addressed the man in the brown suit. I glanced at Laurie; he was staring with his mouth open.
“Hello, boy,” Jannie said. She turned to Laurie. “Boy?” she whispered, “or girl?”
“Huh,” said Laurie.
“Madam,” said the man in the brown suit, “here is a boy, I can tell right away, who is lively and full of fun and a real Western Rancho type, right out there with—”
“In all the papers?” said the woman; she was removing a spot from the boy’s face with the corner of her handkerchief.
“Look,” said Laurie loudly, “he got dirty, poor thing.”
With a certain obscure pride in my son I took him by the back of the collar and hauled him purposefully toward the department where they had pants in his size; I pushed the doll carriage with my other hand while Jannie shepherded Linda, Marilyn, and the rest, with loud, laughing directions. I was also carrying Jannie’s beret and her coat—they could not be set on top of the carriage without disturbing sweet dolly—and Laurie’s suit jacket, and my own coat. My voice was getting shrill, but I was still doggedly adding “dear” to every sentence.
Once I got Laurie into the department where I wanted him, there was small trouble in getting him to choose a pair of pants. He also chose a gabardine suit much like the one the boy with his picture in the paper had been wearing, priced at $59.95, a complete suit of space cadet armor, priced at $47.00, a very odd fur hat which for some reason he admired, and which would have cost me $7.50, a shaggy suede jacket which was called a Buffalo Bill jacket, and which was priced modestly at $32.50, pants to match $17.00. I one by one eliminated these articles, on the grounds that they were too heavy, too furry, too shaggy, or too expensive. I proffered a bright red bow tie, priced at sixty-nine cents, as a substitute. After some argument, during the course of which I told him he could buy anything he wanted with his father’s dime, he was persuaded to take the bow tie or nothing, and the salesman remarked in an aside to me, “I don’t think these fads will last.” Jannie had amused herself during this time by trying on one fur hat after another, to the extreme bewilderment of Linda, Marilyn, and the rest. She also fell into conversation with a harmless old lady who was trying to find a birthday gift for her nephew and who had great difficulty resisting Jannie’s invitation to come shopping with us and Mommy would buy her a pair of shoes.
I added the package with the bow tie and two pairs of corduroy pants to the doll carriage, Jannie’s coat and beret, Laurie’s suit jacket, and my own coat. Fortunately Jannie’s shoes were on the same floor; we could not conceivably get into an elevator, and I was most reluctant to get back onto the escalator. In the shoe department, Jannie sat herself down, ranged her girls about her, and, folding her hands peaceably, announced that she intended to have a pair of shiny black shoes with high-heels and pretty straps and sparkles and no toes.
“Shoes for the kiddies?” said the shoe clerk brightly, setting his little stool down before us.
“Just me and my girls,” Jannie said. “We all want shoes.”
The clerk did not hear this because I was telling him loudly that we wanted something in a solid brown oxford with a good sole. I knew I was going to have to reach a compromise somewhere along this line, and I thought I would start from rock bottom and so, going up, have more bargaining power. When the clerk brought the brown oxford Jannie dismissed it after a brief glance. “That’s for my brother,” she said, “bring something for me.”
During the excruciating process of Jannie’s buying herself a pair of shoes, Laurie amused himself by counting the number of boxes the clerk brought out, Jannie held steadfastly to the high-heeled black sandal, and I grew very tense and began saying things like “How will you go to school without shoes because you are certainly not going to have any shoes until you start behaving like a little lady . . .”
We reached a tearful compromise on a pair of black patent leather shoes, completely impractical, but better, I reassured myself, than the black sandals with the high heels. Jannie remarked, as we left the shoe department, “I’m glad you’re not my mommy. My mommy always buys me the shoes I want, and if you were my mommy I would run away.”
“Those are the worst shoes I ever saw in all my life,” Laurie told her.
“They’re beautiful,” said Jannie. “All my girls have shoes just like them.”
I had added the package with the shoes to my other portage.
“Let’s have lunch,” Laurie said.
I looked at the clock with the faint unconscious hope common to all mothers that time will somehow have passed magically away and the next time you look it will be bedtime. It was ten minutes to twelve; a good eight hours to go before the nightly miracle, but a legitimate time for lunch.
“Well, children,” I said, smiling sweetly and falsely around the table in the restaurant, “well, now we’re going to remember our company manners, aren’t we?”