“Note the individual and subjective nature of each case. No two are alike and there is no reason to expect them to be. Each man or woman must find for himself or herself that occupation in which hard work and long hours make him or her happy. Contrariwise, if you are looking for shorter hours and longer vacations and early retirement, you are in the wrong job. Perhaps you need to take up bank robbing. Or geeking in a sideshow. Or even politics.”
For the decade 1907-1917 I was privileged to enjoy perfect happiness by Jubal’s definition. By 1916 I had borne eight children. During those years I worked harder and for longer hours than I ever have before or since, and I was bubbling with happiness the whole time save for the fact that my husband was away oftener than I liked. Even that had its compensations, as it made our marriage a series of honeymoons. We prospered, and the fact that Briney was oftenest away when business was best resulted in our never experiencing what the Bard called so aptly: “—the tired marriage sheets.”
Briney always tried to telephone to let me know exactly when he would be home…and then he would tell me: “B.i.b.a.w.y.l.o and I w.w.y.t.b.w.” Day or night I would do my best to follow his instructions exactly; I would be in bed asleep with my legs open and wait for him to wake me the best way, but I always took the precaution of bathing first and my sleep might be only that I closed my eyes and held still when I heard him unlock the front door. Then as he got into bed with me he might call me by some outlandish name, “Mrs. Krausemeyer,” or “Battleship Kate,” or “Lady Plushbottom”—and I would pretend to wake up, and call him anything but Brian—“Hubert” or “Giovanni” or “Fritz”—and perhaps inquire, still with my eyes closed, whether or not he had placed five dollars on the dresser…whereupon he would scold me for trying to run up the price of tail in Missouri and I would get busier than ever, trying to prove that I was so worth five dollars.
Then, sated but still coupled, we would argue over whether or not I had put on a five-dollar performance. Which could result in tickling, biting, wrestling, spanking, laughing, and another go at it, with much bawdy joking throughout. I delighted in trying to be that duchess in the drawing room, economist in the kitchen, and whore in the bedroom that is the classic definition of the ideal wife. Perhaps I was never perfect at it, but I was happiest working hard at all three aspects of that trinity.
Brian also enjoyed singing bawdy songs while coupling, songs with plenty of rhythm to them, a beat that could be matched to the tempo of coition and speeded up or slowed down at will, songs like:
“Bang away, my Lulu!
“Bang away good and strong!
“Oh, what’ll I do for a bang away
“When my Lulu’s dead and gone!”
Then endless verses, each bawdier than the last:
“My Lulu had a chicken,
“My Lulu had a duck.
“She took them into bed with her
“And taught them how to—
“BANG! away my Lulu!
“Bang away good and strong!”
Until at last Briney couldn’t stretch it out any longer and had to spend.
While he was resting and recovering, he might demand of me a bedtime story, wanting to know how I had improved each shining hour with a little creative adultery.
He didn’t mean what I might have done with Nelson and/or Betty Lou; that was all in the family and didn’t count. “What’s new, Mo’? Are you getting to be a dead arse in your old age? You, the Scandal of Thebes County? Tell me it’s not true!”
Now believe me, friends, between dishes and diapers, cooking and cleaning, sewing and darning, wiping noses and soothing children’s tragedies, I didn’t have time to commit enough adultery to interest even a young priest. After that ridiculous and embarrassing contretemps with Reverend Zeke I can’t recall any illicit bed bouncing Maureen did between 1906 and 1918 that my husband did not initiate and condone in advance…and not much of that as Briney was if anything even busier than I.
I must have been a great disappointment to Mrs. Grundy (several of her lived in our block, many of her went to our church) as, during those ten years leading up to the war that eventually was called “World War I” or “War of the Collapse, First Phase”—during that decade I not only tried to simulate the perfect, conservative, Bible-Belt lady and housewife, I actually was that sexless, modest, church-oriented creature—except in bed with the door locked, alone or with my husband or, on rare and utterly safe occasions, in bed with someone else but with my husband’s permission and approval and usually with his chaperonage.
Besides which, only a robot can stay coupled enough hours out of the year to matter. Even Galahad, tireless as he is, spends most of his time being the leader of Ishtar’s best surgical team. (Galahad—Galahad reminds me of Nelson. Not just in appearance; the two are twins in temperament and attitudes—even in body odor now that I think of it. When I get home, I must ask Ishtar and Justin how much of Galahad derives from Nelson. Since we Howards started with a limited gene pool, convergence, along with probability and chance, often comes close to physically reincarnating a remote ancestor in some descendant on Tertius or Secundus.)
Which reminds me of what I did with part of my time and how Random Numbers got his name.
I don’t think there was ever a month in the first half of the twentieth century but what both Briney and I were studying something…and usually studying a language besides, which hardly counts; we had to stay ahead of our children. We usually did not study the same thing—Briney did not study shorthand or ballet; I did not study petroleum extraction methods or evaporation control in irrigation. But study we did. I studied because I had been left with a horrid feeling of intellectual coitus interruptus through not being able to go on to college at least through a bachelor’s degree, and Brian studied because, well, because he was a Renaissance man with all knowledge his field. According to the Archives my first husband lasted 119 years. It is a cinch bet that he was studying some subject new to him the last few weeks of his life.
Sometimes we studied together. In 1906 he started in on statistics, probability, and chance by mail, the ICS school—and here were the books and the lessons in our house, so Maureen did them too, all but mailing my work in. So we both were immersed in this most fascinating field of mathematics when our kitten, Random Numbers, joined our lives, courtesy of Mr. Renwick, driver salesman for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company.
The kitten was an adorable mass of silver-gray fluff and was at first named Fluffy Ruffles through an error in sex; she was a he. But he demonstrated such lightning changes in mood, direction, speed, and action that Brian remarked, “That kitten doesn’t have a brain; he just has a skull full of random numbers, and whenever he bangs his head into a chair or ricochets off a wall, it shakes up the random numbers and causes him to do something else.”
So “Fluffy Ruffles” became “Random Numbers” or “Random” or “Randie.”
As soon as the snow was gone in the spring of ’07 we installed a croquet court in our back yard. At first it was played by us four adults. (Over the years it was played by everyone.) Then it was four adults and Random Numbers. Every time a ball was hit that kitten would draw his sword and CHARGE! He would overtake the ball and throw himself on it, grabbing it, all four limbs. Imagine, please, a grown man stopping a rolling hogshead by throwing himself around it. Better imagine football pads and a helmet for him.
Random wore no pads; he went into action wearing nothing but fluff and his do-or-die attitude. That ball must be stopped, and it was up to him to do it—Allah il Allah Akbar!
Only one solution—Lock up the cat while playing croquet. But Betty Lou would not permit that.
Very well, add to the rules this special ground rule: Anything done to a croquet ball by a cat, good or bad, was part of the natural hazards; you played it that way.
I remember one day when Nelson picked up the cat and cradled it in his left arm, then used his mallet with one hand. Not only did it not help him—Random jumped o
ut of his arm and landed ahead of the ball, causing Nelson to accomplish nothing—but also we convened a special session of the Supreme Croquet Court and ruled that picking up a cat in an attempt to influence the odds was unfair to cats and an offense against nature and must be punished by flogging the villain around the regimental square.
Nelson pleaded youth and inexperience and long and faithful service and got off with a suspended sentence, although a minority opinion (from Betty Lou) called for Nelson to drive to a drugstore and fetch back six ice cream cones. Somehow the minority opinion prevailed, although Nelson complained that fifteen cents was too heavy a fine for what he had done and the cat should pay part of it.
Eventually Random Numbers grew up, became sedate, and lost his enthusiasm for croquet. But the cat rule remained and was adjudged to apply to any cat, be he resident or traveling salesman, and to puppies, birds, and children under the age of two. At a later time I introduced this rule onto the planet Tertius.
Did I mention the transaction under which I obtained Random Numbers from Mr. Renwick? Perhaps I didn’t. He wanted to “swap a little pussy for a little pussy”—that’s the way he expressed it. I walked right into that because I asked what he wanted for the kitten?—expecting him to say that there was no charge as the kitten hadn’t cost him anything. I did not expect anything else because, while I was aware that some pedigreed cats were bought and sold, I had never actually encountered one. In my experience kittens were always given away, free.
I had not intended ever again to let Mr. Renwick inside the house; I remembered the first time. But I was unexpectedly confronted with a fact: Mr. Renwick carrying a cardboard shoe box with a kitten in it. Grab the box and shut the door in his face? Open the box on the front porch when he was warning me that the kitten was eager to escape, and scraping, scrambling sounds confirmed it? Lie to him, tell him, sorry, we have already acquired a kitten?
When the telephone rang—
I wasn’t really used to having a telephone. I felt that a ringing telephone meant either bad news or that Briney was calling; either way, I had to answer it at once. I said, “Excuse me!” and fled, leaving him standing in our open door.
He followed me in, through the central hall, and into my sewing room/ office/chore room, where I was on the phone. There he put the shoe box down in front of me, and opened it…and I saw this adorable gray kitten while I was talking with my husband.
Brian was on his way home and had called to ask if there was anything I wanted him to pick up.
“I don’t think so, dear. But do hurry home; I have your kitten. She’s a little beauty, just the color of a pussywillow. Mr. Renwick brought her, the driver for the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company. He’s trying to screw me, Briney, in exchange for the kitten… No, I’m quite certain. He not only said so, but he has come up behind me and put his arms around me and is now playing with my breasts… What?… No, I didn’t tell him anything of the sort. So do hurry. I won’t fight with him, dear, because I’m pregnant, I’ll just give in… Yes, sir; I will. Au ’voir.” I hung up the receiver…although I had thought of using it like a policeman’s truncheon. But I truly was unwilling to fight while I had a baby inside me.
Mr. Renwick did not let go of me, but when what I was saying penetrated his head, he held still. I turned around in his arms. “Don’t try to kiss me,” I said. “I don’t want to risk so much as a cold while I’m pregnant. Do you have a rubber? A Merry Widow?”
“Uh—Yes.”
“I thought you would have; I’m sure I’m not the first housewife you’ve tried this with. All right; do please use it, as I don’t want to contract a social disease, and neither do you. Are you married?”
“Yes. Christ, you’re a cool one!”
“Not at all. I simply won’t risk being raped while I’m carrying a baby; that’s all. Since you are married, you don’t want to catch anything, either, so put on that rubber. How long does it take to drive from Thirty-first and Woodland?” (Brian had called from Twelfth and Walnut, much farther away.)
“Uh—Not very long.”
“Then you’d better hurry or my husband will catch you at it. If you really do mean to do this to me.”
“Oh, the hell with it!” He abruptly let go of me, turned away, headed for the front door.
He was fumbling with the latch when I called out, “You forgot your kitten!”
“Keep the damned cat!”
That is how I “bought” Random Numbers.
Raising kittens is fun, but raising children is the most fun—if the children happen to be your own—if you happen to be the sort of person who enjoys bearing and rearing children. For Jubal was right; it is subjective, a matter of one’s individual disposition. I had seventeen children on my first go-around and greatly enjoyed rearing all of them—each different, each individual—and I’ve had more since my rescue and rejuvenation, and have enjoyed them even more because Lazarus Long’s household is organized so that taking care of babies is easy for everyone.
But I often find other people’s children repulsive and their mothers crashing bores, especially when they talk about their disgusting offspring (instead of listening to me talking about mine). It seems to me that many of those little monsters should have been drowned at birth. They strike me as compelling arguments for birth control. As my father pointed out years ago, I am an amoral wretch…who does not necessarily regard an unfinished human being, wet and soiled and smelly at one end and yelling at the other, as “adorable.”
In my opinion many babies are simply bad-tempered, mean little devils who grow up to be bad-tempered, mean big devils. Look around you. The “sweet innocence” of children is a myth. Dean Swift had an appropriate solution for some of them in “A Modest Proposal.” But he should not have limited it to the Irish, as there are many scoundrels who are not Irish.
Now you may be so prejudiced and opinionated that you feel that my children are less than perfect—despite the overwhelming evidence that mine were born with halos and cherubs’ wings. So I won’t bore you with every time Nancy brought home straight A’s on her report cards. Practically every time, that is. My kids are smarter than your kids. Prettier, too. Is that enough? All right, I’ll drop the matter. My kids are wonderful to me, and your kids are wonderful to you, and let’s leave it at that, and not bore each other.
I mentioned the Panic of 1907 when I told about Betty Lou’s marriage to Nelson but at the time I had no idea that a panic was coming. Nor did Brian, or Nelson, or Betty Lou. But history does repeat itself, somewhat and in some ways, and something that happened in early 1907 reminded me of something that happened in 1893.
After the birth of Georgie on Betty Lou’s wedding day, I stayed home as usual, for a while, but as soon as I felt up to moving around, I left my brood with Betty Lou and went downtown. I planned to go by streetcar, was unsurprised when Nelson volunteered to drive me down in his Reo runabout. I accepted and bundled up warm; the Reo was rather too well ventilated; it had an open buggy somewhere in its ancestry.
My purpose was to move my savings account. I had placed it in the Missouri Savings Bank in 1899, when we married and settled in Kansas City, by a draft on the First State Bank of Butler (the booming metropolis of Thebes had no banks), where Father had helped me to open a savings account when we came back from Chicago. By the time I was married, it had grown to more than a hundred dollars.
Footnote: If I had more than a hundred dollars in a savings account, why did I serve my family fried mush for their evening meal? Answer: Do you think I am crazy? In 1906 in the American middle west, a sure way for a wife to castrate spiritually her husband would be to suggest that he was incapable of keeping food on the table; I didn’t need Dr. Fraud to tell me that. Males live by pride. Kill their pride and they won’t support wives and children. It would be some years before Brian and I would learn how to be utterly open and easy with each other. Brian knew that I had a savings account but he never asked me how much I had in it, and I would serve fried m
ush or do any symbolic equivalent as often as needed before I would buy groceries with my own money. Savings were for “a rainy day.” We both knew this. If Brian fell ill, had to go to a hospital, I would use my savings as needed. We had no need to talk about it. Meanwhile Brian was the breadwinner; I did not intrude into his responsibility. Nor he into mine.
But what about Foundation monies? Didn’t that hurt his pride? Perhaps it did. It may be indicative to take a look into the future: In the long run every dime we received from “ringing the cash register” wound up with our children, as each got married. Brian never mentioned to me any such intention. In 1907 it would have been silly to do so.
By early 1907 my savings account had grown to over three hundred dollars, by nickels and pennies and tightest economies. Now that I was working at home and could no longer go to school downtown it seemed smart to me to move my account to a little neighborhood bank near the southside post office substation. One of us four had to go to our post office box each day; whoever did it could make deposits for me. If ever I had to withdraw money, then that one could be I.
Nelson parked his runabout on Grand Avenue and we walked around to 920 Walnut. I took my passbook to a teller—did not have to wait; the bank was not crowded—and told the teller that I wanted to withdraw my account.
I was referred to an officer of the bank, over behind the railing, a Mr. Smaterine. Nelson put down the newspaper he had been glancing at, stood up. “Difficulty?”
“I don’t know. They don’t seem to want to let me have my money. Will you come with me?”
“Sure thing.”
Mr. Smaterine greeted me politely, but raised his brows at Nelson. I introduced them. “This is Mr. Nelson Johnson, Mr. Smaterine. He is my husband’s business partner.”
“How do you do, Mr. Johnson. Please sit down. Mrs. Smith, our Mr. Wimple tells me that you need to see me about something.”
“I suppose I do. I attempted to withdraw my account. He told me that I must see you.”