Onions in the Stew
I have friends “studying people” in drugstores, dress shops (I. Magnin’s excluded, because to People Studiers even working at Magnin’s is grand), department stores, and insurance offices. All People Studiers are shifty-eyed, smoke cork-tipped cigarettes and have crumpled faces. They range in age from thirteen to seventy-five and are predominantly female.
My first morning of walking the trail I had plenty of time. I had left the house at a quarter of seven and, when I got to the “big tree,” the ferry was just leaving the dock at Harper, a small settlement on the Olympic Peninsula and the ferry’s only other stop. I made my way to the dock in a leisurely fashion and leaned on the splintery old railing. A sea gull swooped down and lit beside me. He had part of one toe missing, his vest was dirty and he had a face like a Hollywood producer, but I was grateful for his friendliness.
Together we examined the morning. In the east the Cascade Range, including Mt. Ranier and all of its foothills, was a purple cutout pasted on a pale green sky. Across the west the Olympic Mountains were a white-crested wave. The water, a rippleless sheet of foil, reflected a single late-blooming star. The fat little ferry, head high above the water, swam steadily toward Blake Island, a plump lonely little place without a single light or inhabitant.
It was nearly seven-fifteen and rosy-faced people began hurrying past me along the dock. Their feet made nice hollow purposeful clumps on the boardwalk. All the women carried bags containing town shoes. I wondered if I should change my shoes then or wait and do it in a genteel fashion in the ladies’ lounge on the ferry. I glanced down at my feet and there, lying between my two brown loafers, was a five-dollar bill.
“It is an omen of good luck,” I told Don and the children that night as I stuffed it in the teapot, traditional place for Mother, even carefree working variety, to stuff money. It was too.
CHAPTER V
GOD IS THE BOSS
IN THE city, as I remember, weather was a topic passed around with the salted peanuts and not expected to hang around much past the introductions. In the country, weather is as important as food and sometimes means the difference between life and death. Discussions of it can branch out into all sorts of interesting directions, such as Mrs. Exeter’s baby which was almost born on the beach because of the storm that took out the dolphins (those bruised bunches of pilings at the end of docks without which the ferries cannot nuzzle into the slip) so the ferry couldn’t land, and a call to the Coast Guard delayed because of a prune upside-down-cake recipe dictated over an eighteen-party telephone line, or that summer we didn’t have any rain from May until September.
In the twelve years since we moved to Vashon Island we have experienced the most rain, the driest summer (that wonderful one), the coldest winter, the most snow, the severest earthquake, the worst slides, the highest tide, the lowest tide, the strongest winds, the longest unceasing period of rain, the densest fog, the hottest day, the earliest spring, the latest spring, the coldest summer, the warmest fall, the dreariest winter (this one), the wettest Christmas, in addition to a total eclipse of the moon, a total eclipse of the sun, and a flying saucer on the Oregon coast.
We have also come to expect, in times of great emergency, no co-operation from the elements.
There was that time, after weeks of agonized waiting (which included withering looks if we dared to use the telephone in the evening for fear “he” might want to call), when Anne was finally asked to the Junior Prom (attended by even freshmen on Vashon) by the right boy. She had a beautiful pale blue net party dress (borrowed from friend of Aunt Alison) and Roger, the boy, worked after school in Beall’s Greenhouses (here on Vashon and the third largest orchid growers in the United States) and he had promised her an orchid, her first. He assured her it would be “still good.” Everything was wonderful! With a tremendous sigh of relief the family settled back to normalcy, at least our version of it. There were a few tense moments the night of the prom when Anne couldn’t decide whether to hide Don and me and pretend she and Joan lived on the beach alone or whether, in tuxedo and formal, we were to be just lounging around in the background, ready to run down to the beach and get a log or two if the fire got low.
Finally Joan, always realistic, said, “I don’t know where you get such dumb ideas, Anne. Why should we dress up for Roger? We’re not going out with him. Say, there’s a girl in school, Betty, who gets all her clothes off the city dump. Last week she got a keen pleated skirt with only a few moth holes in it.” Anne told her not to be disgusting, if she could help it. Anne’s last admonition when she went to dress was, “Now, when I come downstairs, don’t tell me I look nice.”
“We won’t have to because you won’t,” Joan said.
“You shut up!” Anne shrieked.
“You make me sick, old false pride,” Joan said.
“Can’t we ever have any peace?” Don said. So I turned up the radio.
Anne did look beautiful. The pale blue was perfect for her red hair and turquoise-blue eyes, but we all kept a stony silence as she stamped down the stairs, walked over and jerked the orchid away from Roger who, for such a “big wheel,” seemed unusually frail and apprehensive. After they had gone Joan got out her homework (mere gesture) and I got out the ironing board. Then they were back, Anne bawling, Roger looking miserable.
“The tide!” Anne wailed. “It’s high! Roger got his shoes all wet just getting here. Can’t you do something?”
“Why don’t you walk the trail?” Joan asked.
“You mind your own business,” Anne screamed, because for some strange adolescent reason walking the trail was a shameful thing to her, like picking up coal off the railroad tracks.
Finally we quieted her and she wore her loafers and carried her shoes and Roger borrowed a pair of Don’s shoes (mine would have been a better fit, but pride, both Roger’s and mine, prevented my suggesting it) and carried his own and they waded through the tide. Anne had a wonderful time at the prom, but she said that she despised living on an island and how would I feel if I was going to the Junior Prom and a ship went by and got my party dress all wet and seaweedy.
Then came Halloween. Anne and Joan were invited to a party at the Falcon’s Nest, a very grand place (since burned down) reputed to have been built by a Chicago millionaire for his daughter. It was a massive house with iron gates and stone pillars. The fireplace was so enormous the andirons let down and the eight-foot logs were rolled in with a peavey. There was a balcony, festooned with real leopard, tiger, puma and zebra skins, that went all around the eighty-foot living room. The bathrooms were supplied with salt and fresh water, and the living room chandelier was a real Indian canoe, full size, with light bulbs around the edge and a petrified Indian paddling it. The Falcon’s Nest was on the hill back of us within easy walking distance.
“Oh, you are lucky!” I told the girls. “I’d love to see that house. I hear the garage in the basement will hold thirty cars.”
Anne said, “I wish we didn’t have to walk though. Do you think we’ll ever have a Cadillac?”
Joan said, “Everybody walks on Halloween, dopey. Don’t you remember last year we trick-and-treated for twenty-two blocks?”
“I wish we were back in the city,” Anne said. “I wish we still lived with Margar.”
I said, “Look at that beautiful moon, girls. It’s just perfect for Halloween.”
Joan said, “Oh, boy, tomorrow night’s Halloween!”
Anne said, “Moonlight on the water makes me feel lonely.”
I said heartily, “Halloween in the country will be wonderful!”
When we woke up the next morning we were having one of our better storms. Winds of fifty miles an hour, drenching rains, enormous waves that thundered on the beach like big guns. As I fixed Don’s lunch and set the table I watched the rain beading the kitchen windows and the wind knocking the geraniums around in the window box, and my heart ached. This was not too unusual, as I have never been exactly hilarious in the early hours, often going through an entire divorce an
d marrying Howard Hughes while I am waiting for the coffee to boil. But this morning my sorrow was for my children. My poor little disappointed children so cruelly imprisoned on this desolate island by my hardhearted husband.
Old Hard Heart came whistling in at that point and said cheerfully, “Another hot day, I see.”
I said, “I could just cry for Anne and Joan. Tonight’s Halloween and they are invited to a party at the Falcon’s Nest.”
Looking out the window, Don said, “They’ll sure have to wear their raincoats.”
“That isn’t the point,” I said furiously. “It’s walking the trail in the rain and their costumes getting all soggy and oh, just everything!” I glared out the window at the storm.
Don said, “Betty, you’re a sentimentalist. Children are realists. Anne and Joan probably won’t be nearly as disappointed in the weather as you are.”
“But they will,” I said. “They were counting on the moonlight.”
“And it’s raining and it can’t be helped, so they will have to face it,” Don said, lighting a cigarette. “Have you ever heard of anybody who amounted to anything who didn’t have a few hardships in his life?”
This brings up a point. All books on “Child—the Training of,” “Home—Making It Happy,” and so on, agree that the parents should always be in absolute accord on matters of discipline. This is a lovely thought and would certainly make any home happier, but from my experience and observation it could only be possible if the mother and father were deaf mutes or identical twins. Take Don and me, for instance. We loved the children. We loved each other. But when a crisis involving discipline arose in our happy little home and it was necessary for us, as reasonable understanding parents, to hark back to our childhoods and try to recall how we felt about the same situation at the same age so we could be fair, we were as far apart as an Eskimo and a Maori.
Don comes from a stern, unrelenting Scotch (both mother and father MacDonalds), Free Methodist (“free” certainly misnomer) family of twelve children. The stories of his childhood had to do with oatmeal, working twelve hours a day for Western Union when he was ten or perhaps it was seven years old, hauling ashes to earn school clothes, church five days a week and hour-long prayers on bony knees every single night. Up to the time of my father’s death when I was twelve, my three sisters, my brother and I had experienced discipline of a sort. I say “of a sort” because Daddy, though very strict when he was home, was a mining engineer and away most of the time and when he was gone Mother was her usual fun-loving, easygoing self and we did as we pleased. After Daddy died we really did as we pleased. Exactly. If we didn’t want to go to school we didn’t (we usually did though and a couple of us even had 4. averages)—if we felt like studying we did, if we didn’t, we didn’t—if we wanted to stay with friends for two or three weeks we did, sometimes not even calling up to give our whereabouts—if we wanted to spend our Sunday School (Episcopal) money for candy, we did. About the only laws of behavior, aside from nice manners, laid down by Mother were that we couldn’t sulk and we were expected to tell the truth, no matter how appalling. Also, even when Daddy was alive we were encouraged to bring all of our friends home with us, as many as we liked for as long as we liked.
Don wanted to be “notified” well in advance of guests. He never got used to the nocturnal shrieks and giggles and trips to the icebox and lending of his pajamas occasioned by Millie’s or Ruthie’s or Jeanie’s or Molly’s staying all night. He just was not used to adolescents, but is anybody?
So the girls, bundled up in yellow slickers, sou’westers and galoshes, went to the Halloween party. The tide was high so we escorted them along the trail but Don did promise to come and get them in the car at eleven-thirty. We thought the tide would be out a little by then. There was a tree down across the trail, a big alder, and the water in the flume by the “big tree” sounded like a waterfall. It was a wild night. We left Anne and Joan at the gate to the Falcon’s Nest at Anne’s request, even though the drive was about a mile long. Don wanted to start back right away but I insisted on waiting until I could see Anne and Joan’s bobbing flashlights up by the door. Through the lashing trees the house, lighted from top to bottom, looked like something out of Jane Eyre.
When Don and I got home we built up the fire, put Pinafore on the record player and had a Scotch and soda. At eleven-thirty I thought we should go up and get them. Don told me to relax and he’d play some Burl Ives. At midnight Anne called. She said not to come for them for a half an hour as they were eating and having a wonderful time. “She sounded excited and happy,” I told Don almost tearfully.
He said, “Why shouldn’t she have a good time—it’s a party,” which remark of course opened such an enormous chasm between us that I didn’t even see any point in attempting to bridge it with conversation. Especially as it involved the basic difference between men and women and goes way back to date of birth when the doctor (male) informs the father (male) that he has a son (male), and the passing out of cigars and rejoicing can be heard for sixty miles. Then if it is a girl there is a great deal of smiling anyway, of being a good sport and talking about next time.
Thanksgiving was fun. Most of my family came out. There were fifteen of us, we had two turkeys (one provided by Mary) and the day was beautiful and everybody loved our house and thought we were so lucky to live on an island that my sister Alison and her husband bought a big old house with five acres and the roof on backward (owner-built) within easy commuting of us if you happened to be a goat, and my brother Cleve bought a small old house with three acres and the icebox on the back porch (local carpenter) within easy commuting if you happened to be a goat with a car.
Then came Christmas. Oh, I was glad we lived in the country where we wouldn’t run any risks of being tainted by the gross commercialism so rampant in the city. We were going to have a real Christmas, pure in spirit, old-fashioned in execution.
“We will make all of our presents and we will have the biggest Christmas tree we have ever had and we will cut it on our own property,” I told my noticeably unenthusiastic little family. As I spoke I could hear the ringing of the axe in the crisp winter air, could see the children standing by, eyes shining, faces wreathed with old-fashioned smiles, while I perhaps hummed a carol or two. Mentally I added popcorn balls, strings of cranberries and gilded walnuts to the festivities.
Anne wailed, “Oh, aren’t we going to the city for Christmas? I told everybody at school we were.”
Joan said, “What do you mean, make our own presents? You mean like those ugly little calendars we used to make in the third grade?”
“I certainly don’t want one,” Anne said.
Don said, “Are you dead set on getting our Christmas tree on our own property?”
“I certainly am,” I said. “That’s one of the main advantages in living in the country. I’d feel like a fool telling any of the people at the office that we bought our Christmas tree.”
“Well, then you’d better get busy on some ideas for decorating a leafless alder,” Don said.
“What about those great big firs right up there?” I said pointing up back of the house.
“Four feet in diameter is a little big even for your taste, isn’t it?” Don said.
“Oh, I don’t mean using one of them for the tree,” I said. “I mean, aren’t there some seedlings around. Up on the Olympic Peninsula all the trees had little trees by the millions.”
“But those weren’t virgin trees,” Don said. Both girls laughed loudly.
I said, “I’ll bet you five dollars I can find a pretty Christmas tree on our own property.”
“By flashlight?” Joan asked. “It’s dark when you leave and dark when you get home.”
“I’ll look on weekends,” I said.
The next weekend it rained. Also the next. But as Christmas was the following Friday we went out anyway. We walked along the beach until we could see Tacoma. We found miles and miles of vacant property all solidly overgrown with alder, madro?
?a, blackberries, syringa, buddleia, elderberry and maple. Sometimes firs or cedars loomed black against the sky but, sans a helicopter, we couldn’t get at them. Sunday we tried the hillsides near us. We found a few fir trees but they were anaemic sallow little things jammed in between alders, syringa, elderberry, madroñas and maples.
“Now are you satisfied?” Don asked, as we stumbled along in the dark and rain toward home.
Anne said, “Marilyn’s mother always has a blue Christmas tree with pink balls. Last Christmas she got a mink coat and Marilyn got a blue peignoir.”
“Painwar! What’s that?” Joan asked.
“Something much too old for Marilyn,” I said crossly.
“You mean like Kotex?” Joan asked.
From the Sanders’ sea wall Don called out, “Tide’s high.” It seemed to me he sounded glad.
Monday morning, Mr. Harvey, a banker who lived around the point from us and with whom I sometimes got a ride to town, if he was early and I was late and I saw him on the ferry, asked me if we had gotten our Christmas tree yet. I told him in amusing detail, but leaving out most of the fighting and all my crabbiness, of our fruitless search. Whereupon he told me that he had some enormous balsam firs on his place, all perfectly symmetrical, and he would be delighted to let us have one. I said that Don and I would be down that night after work. He said he would have the tree ready for us. He did, cut and packaged. It was perfectly beautiful with cones on its thick branches, thirty-one feet tall (the distance I had told him it was from our living room floor to the peak of the roof—I was only about ten feet off), and the largest tree in the history of the family. We floated it home.
A ferry acquaintance of Don’s, who had been a high rigger in the logging camps, helped us put it up. The family Christmas tree ornaments which I had inherited were not quite sufficient, especially after Don had decorated the upper branches by balancing on one of the beams, snagging a branch with the poker, attaching an ornament and letting the branch snap back and smash the ornament against the wall. We strung popcorn, made stars out of tinfoil, gilded walnuts, added three more strings of lights and two dozen of the largest candy canes (Vashon purchase) and the tree was lovely.