“Look, dearie, let me take da pan. When they’ve had a wee drop too much it’s not good to bring da ting back in—that is, too soon. Leave um lay awhile. I’ll just keep this till youse can keep it agin.” She sighed. “An say a wee prayer to da Blessed Virgin dat pots an pans don’t break like dishes. Ah, me, da Friday nights dat used to be.”
She smiled up at Gertie, a radiant smile, the smile of Maggie for the new feet of St. Francis. “He’s taken Maggie tudu store—nine o’clock dere open now till Christmas—for a Christmas present fur me, c’nyumagine? When u stores close he’ll take her to mass. To be sure, I’m happy—but allasame I hope it’s not dishes.” And she giggled gaily as a child; then, as she looked up into the ugly twisting, agonized face above the battered pot, she began a soft patting and sh-sh-shushing. “Don’t cry—it makes um worse. An that old Homer is taken notes, I do believe. It’s nothing. Only last week I was saying to Mrs. Bommarita, wasn’t I, Timmy? that Mr. Nevels seemed a sober an dacent man; to be sure he’ll have his drop, but …”
Gertie was at last able to speak. “He ain’t drinken—he jist wants some new pans. Leastways I don’t recken he’s a drinken. He never done it back home.”
“But he’s a man, dearie, and a man is alla time changing.”
“Mom—” Clytie was running down the steps hunting her mother, trying hard to act as if nothing had happened—“Pop’s awful tired; he’s a feelen bad cause he got bumped. That means another feller’ull git his job an he’ll have to work a midnight shift, but he’ll be home all day. Won’t that be fun? It’s jist eight o’clock, an Pop said let Reuben stay with th little youngens—they’ve both gone to sleep, an Reuben don’t want to go no how—an me an you an Pop an Enoch could do some Christmas buyen.”
Gertie turned slowly away from Mrs. Daly, leaving the pot in her hands. “You uns go,” she said to Clytie as she went up the steps. If she could only give the money in such a way that Clovis would never suspicion she had more than fifty dollars—fifty-four eighty it had been. But she would save the crucifix money; fifteen dollars would buy a sow.
EIGHTEEN
GERTIE STOOD WITH HER head thrust out the partly opened kitchen door, and watched the gray brown sparrows feed on the coal-shed roof. Twice she had spread crumbs for them, but once a gray alley cat had chased the birds and licked the crumbs, and when they were back again Tony Bommarita had covered their food with handfuls of the freshly fallen snow. The birds were ugly-voiced and dirty looking, but standing so, with the inside door shut behind her, there was for the moment a feeling of being alone with them, the way it had used to be back home, like the day she’d cut the hickory tree down on the Tipton Place. She had stood then, and watched two red birds. She closed her eyes. If she shut out the alley, she could smell cold creek water and cedar, the cedar smell strong and clean, like on a still, misty morning.
“Mom, Mom, make Amos gimme my auto! He got a big red wagin, an now he wants my little ole toy auto.”
Gertie turned back into the kitchen slowly, for in turning the red birds flew away, the smell of cedar faded, and there was the closeness, the noise, the overcrowding of all her family at home on Christmas Day. The radio could not cry again of so many shopping days left till Christmas. Everything was sold that could be sold. Millions and millions had bought like Clovis. Millions and millions of women would be happy to have a man like Clovis.
“Enoch, hand me that wrench on th table.” Clovis, taking the wrench from angry Enoch, smiled up at her from where he worked flat on his back under a large secondhand but bright white washing machine. “I’ll have this thing a worken pretty soon. An you can do a washen, old woman, with no work atall.”
She tried to smile. All morning that had been the hardest part, the trying to smile in the heat and the steam of the oven baking the turkey Clovis had bought. But she had smiled on everything, even on the dried-out Christmas tree that had no smell except one that made her think of shoe polish, for Clytie had sprayed it with artificial snow. It held no memory of earth or wind or sun or sky; a tree grown in a field, Clovis had said, just for Christmas. Lifeless it was, as the ugly paper wreath Clytie had bought. But still she had to smile, for the big gifts were for her. “Mom, Mom, Cassie’s climbed up an got the scissors. She knows she ain’t supposed to have em,” Clytie quarreled from the passway. Then, with no permission from Gertie, she whirled and jerked the scissors from Cassie.
“Cassie Marie,” Gertie began, “you know, you oughtn’t—”
Cassie had suddenly dissolved into a heartbroken weeping. She quickly checked her sobs, but then, just as unusual for her as the crying, she tried to argue with her mother. “I need um, Mom. I’ll be real careful with them scissors,” she begged. She came into the kitchen and looked hopefully up at Gertie, the new fancy doll that Santa had bought clutched upside down in her arms.
“You’d ruin them sharp scissors, an they’d ruin you, mebbe,” Gertie said.
Cassie turned away, weeping again. She sounded so sorrowful that Gertie turned to pick her up and baby her a bit. But when Cassie went away to the block of wood, Gertie stopped by the kitchen table. Getting out of the kitchen seemed, for the moment at least, too much trouble. Never again could she walk straight into the passway, even with the table against the wall. The new washing machine took up so much room she could hardly slip her big body sidewise between it and the table. Amos began screaming again for the red plastic car, and Clovis shook his head in weariness.
“A body ud think them youngens got nothen. I thought Cassie was crazy over that new doll, an she did keep a talken about how pretty it was dressed.” He sighed, resting on his elbows by the washing machine. “I allus hoped Clytie could have a nice store-bought doll like that—an now she’s too old, an Cassie she ain’t so pleased. An th money I’ve spent. What did she want?”
“Mebbe,” Gertie said, looking again at the hopping sparrows, “she don’t know. Lots a grown people never git an never know what they want. They spend money, hopen it’ll satisfy em, like a man a hunten matches in a strange dark house.”
She nodded toward the alley where Sophronie’s Wheateye was running down the steps. She wore a new pink rayon dress, and had an oversized doll on one arm and the box of red plastic dishes cradled in the other. Gertie watched a little saucer fall from a corner of the flimsy crumpling box and lie, a bright spot of red in the snow. She ought to call and tell the child that she had lost a dish, but she only shook her head. Did it matter? In a few days the box would be gone, the dishes broken, and nothing left but their price. Sophronie would pay that off at so much a week. $2.75 they had cost. How much was $2.75?
Clovis said, “There,” in the pleased voice which meant that something he had meant to fit was fitted.
The sparrows flew away as Mrs. Anderson, wearing her coat and boots, came down her steps carrying a bright red tricycle, and followed by a snow-suited Georgie. Then the Daly door opened and out poured the Daly boys. All seemed to have either fancy wheeled toys or new sleds, though soon she saw that two were on hockey skates fastened to special shoes, the kind Enoch had wanted. Even Reuben, who would have little to do with the alley games, had somewhat sheepishly said the other day that he would like to learn to skate.
Mrs. Daly, steamy-faced, straggeldy-headed, her apron damp with dishwater, the least one in her arms, stood in the door and watched, smiling. Her glance leaped from child to child; each broadened the smile so that when she was at last able to tear her eyes away and look at Mrs. Anderson, struggling to get Georgie face forward on the seat of his tricycle, her face was so full of smiles it broke into joyful laughter as she called, “Merry Christmas!”
She flipped her apron about the baby and came on down the alley. “Such a fine Christmas,” she said, beaming up at the plainly unhappy Mrs. Anderson. “Fresh snow. Nobody sick.” She glanced at the Bommarita door, then at Mr. Anderson behind his storm door, and spoke more loudly. “Our father home sleepen. He went last night wit Maggie tudu midnight mass. My, ain’t she pretty? Wha
t’s her name?” She was talking now to Wheateye, coming from the Miller door where she had been to show her doll.
“Sally Marie,” and Wheateye held up the great doll, demonstrated its powers of going to sleep and saying, “Mama,” then ran to get the new doll buggy.
“That Santa Claus, he’s sure got a failen fu kids.” Mrs. Daly smiled on Wheateye as she had smiled on her own. Her joy even touched Mrs. Anderson, who for a moment seemed what she was, a young and pretty woman, hardly thirty. Her voice was gay when she called to Gertie, now on her stoop:
“Your turkey smells good, sage in the stuffing like we always had at home. You almost never smell it here.” And after a wary glance at Georgie, still sitting backward on his tricycle, she came over and stood by Gertie’s stoop, smiling up at her. “If I shut my eyes here by your door, I can think I’m back home.”
“I’ll give you some a mine I brung frum home.”
“Homer doesn’t care for sage and red pepper,” Mrs. Anderson said in the weary, talking-to-herself voice she often used, so that it seemed she was not the same woman who a moment ago had laughed in the alley. “Homer doesn’t care for fruit cake, either. The pediatrician would faint at the idea of letting Georgie taste it. I made fruit cakes mostly—I guess because I—” She reached for a pinch of fresh snow from the porch rail, watched the snow disappear, then looked at her empty fingers—“I wanted something that wasn’t sensible and vitamic, just once, for Christmas,” she confessed all in a breath.
Wheateye was rolling a new and shining doll buggy, large enough for a live baby, down the Meanwell steps. She was being helped by a yawning Sophronie in a new housecoat, shinier and flouncier than the old had been. Sophronie nodded sleepily, but smiled as she returned the Christmas greetings the women called to her. No sooner had she gone back into her kitchen than Mrs. Anderson began in a low, worried voice, her disapproving glance on Wheateye’s doll carriage, “Isn’t it awful how they work at terrible jobs—have you seen Sophronie’s hands lately—and then waste their money? That housecoat: what in the world does a factory worker with three children need with a flimsy rayon housecoat? And all that foolishness for the children. It makes it hard on the others with sensible parents.”
“‘Man cannot live by bread alone,’” Gertie suddenly said in a surprised voice.
Mrs. Anderson nodded. “‘But by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’ I went to Sunday school too, when I was little. But a flimsy doll buggy given by a mother who can’t afford it to a child who won’t take care of it has nothing to do with bread and God’s word.”
Gertie was silent, her thoughts on bubble gum and shoestrings. She wished she’d got skates for Reuben—and maybe Enoch too.
The sound of a through train rushing by silenced Mrs. Anderson. The smoke rolled and the cinders rattled down. Christmas seemed gone, sped with the train to some quieter, cleaner place. The smoke was still falling when Enoch’s friend, Mike Turbovitch, came plunging and staggering on hockey skates, clumsy in the snow. He stopped at the bottom step and called: “Oh, Enoch, come on out. Yu gitchu hockey skates?”
Enoch came running to the call, but stopped, his head around the storm door when he saw Mike’s skates. He looked past him to the Dalys and their toys, and then saw Tony Bommarita pulling a long new sled. He turned quickly away. His chocked mumble, “I’d ruther listen to th radio an play with my builden set,” was cut off by the slamming door.
Mike looked after him with a shrewd but pitying glance, then turned to Gertie with a sharp, accusing look. “Didn’t he git his hockey skates, nor nothen?”
Gertie, conscious of Mrs. Anderson’s watching, listening face, said, “Oh, sure, a builden set an stuff,” but Mike looked suspicious still, and after a moment’s waiting and another call he staggered away.
When he had gone, Gertie called into the house and suggested to Enoch that he and Amos come out and play with the new wagon, but Enoch’s answer was tearful and resentful. “Wagins is baby stuff, Mom.”
Amos, roused from his boats in the bathroom, cried, “I ain’t no baby,” but an instant later he was in the living room, screaming because Enoch had the wagon.
There was a thumping and bumping of the wagon while Enoch yelled: “You wasn’t usen it. You an Cassie allatime play with my things.” There were more screams and thumps, and Clovis finally scolded. Though his voice was loud, it held the absent-minded tone of one taken up with some beloved pastime, so that his, “Behave yerselves youngens, fore I git a hick’ry limb,” had no effect at all.
Gertie, embarrassed by the poor showing of her family on Christmas, turned to chide the boys, but Clytie screamed: “Mom, make em quit! They’re a tearen th place up, an I cain’t hardly try on my new dress.”
“Merry Christmas.” It was Mrs. Daly, who had at last managed to tear herself away from the sight of her children, going now into the next alley.
“We ain’t so merry,” Gertie said.
“Sick on Christmas day?” Mrs. Daly asked, coming up the walk.
Gertie shook her head. The screaming of Amos, the bumping of the fought-over wagon, and Clytie’s shrill cries that they’d knock the Christmas tree over told Mrs. Daly enough of the Christmas in her house without her adding words to it. The sounds proclaimed to any listening ears that Santie had brought to all the children only one real toy fit for showing up and down the alleys.
Mrs. Daly listened and nodded as Clovis listened and nodded over the car’s motor on a cold morning. She shook her head. “Yu gotta git um all a big present apiece. Once I tried one sled butween Chris an Joe.” She sighed at the memory, then winked at Gertie and whispered, “Yu least kid’s Amos, ain’t he?”
When Gertie had nodded, Mrs. Daly stuck her face close to the broken-out pane in the storm door, and called above the tumult: “Amos, it’s too bad youse is too little to steer an don’t know how. Yu could steer outside. Du kids is haven a kind a Christmas parade. An let youse brudder push.” She opened the storm door invitingly.
Another fight threatened over who should pull the wagon to the door. “Now, now,” Mrs. Daly cried, going into the kitchen. “I ginerally git all th big toys tudu door myself. S’job in a crowded place. My, my, youse gotta big Christmas.” Her voice was warm with genuine pleasure as she went on: “A refrigerator—such a big one an so fine—linoleum anu washing machine. An ina war when stuff’s so hard to git.” As soon as she had put the wagon through the door, she must turn back and examine the great white icebox. It rose higher than her head and blocked most of the kitchen window, but her eyes were worshipful, pleased, Gertie thought, as if the thing had been her own.
Enoch forgot his quarrel with Amos and sprang to show Mrs. Daly the wonders of the icebox. As soon as he was out of bed, he had put water into the trays. Then, it had seemed to Gertie, trying to get breakfast in the sharply contracted kitchen, that he had opened the thing at least a hundred times to see if the water was freezing. Now, trying as before to catch the light going on, he opened its door with a quick hard pull, calling to Mrs. Daly: “Lookee. Lookee. It’s got a place fer butter an meat an vegetables an everthing.” He opened little doors and pulled out trays and drawers. The Icy Heart, as if trying to impress the little woman, flung out air so cold it made a fog in the hot kitchen. Next there came a soft purring, as if some strange kind of polar cat were curled in the heart of it.
“It’s one of th finest I’ve ever seen,” Mrs. Daly said.
“A 1942 Icy Heart with nine and three-tenths cubic feet,” Enoch said, putting his ear close the better to hear the white cat. “Pop was real lucky to git it: no black market, taxes, nothen. He got it off’n a man he knows in th shop that got TB an is a goen to Arizona. He sold it an th washen machine—cheap.”
“His wife was sure a good housekeeper, not a nick on it,” Mrs. Daly said, running a gentle finger down the blue and silver handle. “Youse’s lucky.”
Clovis warmed to her praise. “The man gimme time an sold it some under OPA. Thataway, he said, them secondhan
d dealers wouldn’t make a pile on him.”
Gertie carried the wagon down the steps. Conscious of Mrs. Anderson’s questioning glance, she tried to smile the way a woman with an almost new ten-cubic-foot Icy Heart should smile. “I know you’re awfully proud of your new things?” Mrs. Anderson asked.
Last night, when she had learned what Clovis had done with the Henley money he had asked for a few days before, telling her then he only wanted to borrow it to pay more on his car debts, she had somehow kept down the bitter-tongued anger that seemed always rising in her of late. She had smiled last night for the children, all gay and excited with the surprise for her. It had been so hard then, it ought to be easy now. Cassie, gay again and singing one of her own songs, ran past her down the walk. Enoch next, and then Amos. Gertie turned away from Mrs. Anderson on the pretext of getting the children started off with the wagon.
A plane went over, but too high to kill conversation with its sounds. The children were beginning to squabble now, especially Wheateye, who was screaming at some of the Daly boys for ruining her doll buggy with snowballs. Behind Mrs. Bommarita, watching her children from her doorway, a radio was crying out the news of great slaughter in Germany. Somewhere another radio was singing Peace on Earth. Mrs. Anderson noticed none of these things. She continued to watch Gertie and wait for her comment.
“I’ve lived a long time without sich,” Gertie said at last. “An when we go back we’ll have to sell em, mebbe fer less than we paid, an—it’s more debts.”
“I’ll betcha never asked fer one of them damn’ big things. I seen it last night when they was moving it in.” It was Max on her steps, dressed in her Sunday best in a long coat with fur on the collar. The dark fur and a dark hat made Max’s face seem gentle as some early spring flower blooming out of last year’s snow-blackened leaves. The bluish rings under her eyes made them seem bigger and softer, her lips redder, kinder. “Victor’s mother,” she went on, coming over to Gertie’s stoop, “she buys th best—has got one exactly like it, only bigger. Always loaded down with enough damn’ junk to start a delicatessen. All them drawers an shelves an trays to fiddle with an keep clean. An now Victor wants one.”