The Dollmaker

  “But I’m full,” Cassie repeated, then asked again, anxiously now: “Can I go outside, Mom?—I gotta go.”

  “No, it’s a spitten snow,” Gertie said firmly, and added with vexation: “You ain’t took off your snowsuit jacket. Time an time agin I’ve told you youngens not to set around in this hot place with all your outdoor riggen on. Take it off,” and she reached for the jacket.

  Cassie sprang away and stood, her arms clasped tightly across the jacket bosom as if to hold it on while shame and fear reddened her face. Gertie stared at her in puzzlement until Clytie cried, “She’s a hiden somethen under her clothes, Mom.”

  Gertie looked at the jacket, flat with no bulges, and then at Cassie’s trembling chin and brimming eyes. “You’ve got to let me take that off, honey.”

  Cassie’s arms dropped by her sides. She blinked rapidly and tried hard to hold her quivering lips together, but the tears came and with them the shamed and troubled sobbing, “I ain’t done nothen, Mom. Honest.”

  Gertie never understood until, with the other children watching, she had undone the jacket and found the note pinned with a small safety pin to Cassie’s dress collar.

  DEAR MRS. NEVELS:

  I would like very much to have a talk with you about Cassie. Could you please, sometime soon, but at your convenience, come up to school? You may see me either during the noon hour or after school.

  Gertie had not finished when Clytie, reading under her elbow, cried, “She’s been up to some meanness, Mom.”

  “Hush,” Gertie said, her chin trembling almost as much as Cassie’s, as she patted the child’s shamed, bowed head. “Her an Miz Huffacre have allus got along good together. An she’s learnen to read. It cain’t be nothen much.” She looked at the clock, “If I hurry I can go right away an see her this noon hour.”

  “Look, Gert,” Clovis, awakened as always by any sound, no matter how small, but out of the ordinary, yawned and struggled with sleep in the passway. “You’ll jist go up there an have another quarrel like you done with Reuben’s teacher.” He studied the note. “Most likely it’s not much, but mebbe I’d better go—in a day er two. She didn’t say they was any hurry.”

  “I’d ought to go,” Gertie said.

  But Cassie caught her apron, begging: “Please, Mom. Don’t go. I don’t want Miz Huffacre mad at me like Reuben’s teacher. I ain’t done nothen.”

  And Cassie cried so that even Clytie comforted: “Aw, honey, it ain’t much. Mebbe you’ve been a talken to yerself in time a school, er mebbe you fergot to blow yer nose. You’re allatime a snifflen an snuffin.”

  Enoch reminded her that “ole Miz Huffacre” was the strictest teacher in school. But Cassie only cried the harder, her words between the sobs a heart-broken moaning, “But I thought we liked one another so.” She went to the block of wood, and stood a long time by the chair that held it, looking up at it. Gradually, the sobs left her, but obediently she kept her silence with the wood, not even smiling on the being hidden there, only sighing as she turned away. She came again to Gertie, begging so with her voice and her eyes to go outside that Gertie at last let her go. After all, there were many other children playing in the alley in spite of the raw winds and half frozen mud.

  Once outside, Cassie seemed much happier. Gertie, each time she looked out, saw her, usually in her favorite place, the little island of safety between the big alley and the railroad fence; at times she even heard snatches of laughter and singing, though no conversation. Callie Lou, she guessed, had really gone away.

  Gertie let her stay until supper getting time, but once inside Cassie wandered about with a forlorn and weary air, so silent that Mrs. Anderson, who dropped in a few minutes later with Judy, wanted to know if she were sick. Gertie answered somewhat shortly that nothing ailed her. Her “No” to Mrs. Anderson’s question of did Cassie take vitamin pills was sharper yet. Still Mrs. Anderson lingered; she had come, she said, to learn if one of these days Gertie could make a doll for Judy. Gertie wished the woman would go home; Enoch and Clytie were beginning their evening squabble over the radio, and it plagued her to have somebody sit and listen and at the same time watch the supper preparations.

  She was glad when, as she was opening a can of corn, Georgie came pounding on the door, “Mom, Mom—Pop’s coming disaway. He see da shirts,” and he sprang inside and stood grinning happily at his mother.

  Mrs. Anderson bit her lip, “Georgie, please, ‘He will see,’ not, ‘He see.” But whatever are you talking about? Your father has seen lots of shirts.”

  “Oh, yeah?” Georgie said, smiling at one of his father’s shirts, freshly ironed, and hanging on an overhead pipe. He peeped through the door, then began jumping up and down in an ecstasy of joy. “He did see me run in here. He learn about u shirts on account u I run in.”

  Mrs. Anderson gave the shirts one uneasy glance then looked about the kitchen in hasty searching, like one hunting an exit sign in time of fire. Her glance happened upon the fried potatoes that Gertie, hoping the woman would take the hint and go home, had dished up and set to keep warm on the open oven door. “Judy’s so hungry, could you please let her have a few pieces of potato?”

  Gertie was so startled at the idea of Judy’s eating fried food that she forgot to hold her head down, and bumped it on the corner shelf. Homer would—

  “Is the figure finished?” he asked breathlessly, before the door was fully opened. His naturally round eyes, rounder now than ever, and bulging with excitement, were fixed on her face as if her answer were the most important thing on earth. She nodded, and wondered at his smile dripping face; pleased it was as Jacob’s with his brother’s birthright.

  Mrs. Anderson put another crispy round of potato into Judy’s mouth and smiled at him. “Whatever is the matter, dear. Don’t you see us, all your family along with Mrs. Nevels?”

  “Of course, of course,” he cried, smiling, rubbing his hands. “Mr.—”

  Georgie began screaming: “Lookut. Lookut, Judy’s got fried potatoes. She’ll be sick. They’re not on her diet. I’m gonna have some,” and he snatched the few pieces left from the saucerful Gertie had given Mrs. Anderson for Judy.

  “Shut up,” Homer said, and Gertie thought he was going to slap his firstborn. Georgie thought so too, and ran into the passway where he stood screaming. Judy screamed because all her potatoes were gone. Gertie gave her some more, and Homer, unable to make himself heard in the uproar, fell silent and for the first time noticed the potatoes. And then he only shrugged his shoulders and smiled, explaining to the puzzled Georgie, quieted now with more potatoes, “Over-rigidity in any training sometimes develops unpleasant consequences.” He looked at his wife, but got only a shade of disapproval through his joy. “But now will she eat her purée of liver? This is her night for purée of liver, isn’t it?”

  Mrs. Anderson nodded and shivered. “And ugh, how I hate to see her eat that damned stuff.”

  Georgie looked at his mother, and so great was his surprise, turning swiftly into admiration, that he could neither eat nor speak; but Homer only looked impatient, like one eager to talk, as Mrs. Anderson continued, turning now to Gertie: “That liver soup has the most horrible color. You know, I’ve often thought that if I could paint with strained baby foods I might get famous. The tints would be something unknown in nature and as yet unconceived by man.”

  Homer never heard. He was saying, as he took the barefooted doll Gertie handed him, “Come, Georgie. We must get home. Daddy and mother have to go out.”

  Mrs. Anderson leaned wearily back in her chair, crying, “Again! Those terrible Turbis.”

  Homer seemed ready to dance on his toes. “The Turbis may be there. But we are going—the McKeckeran’s have invited us to their home.”

  “McKeckeran! McKeckeran? You mean the people who practically forced us to go to that hockey match. The wife, you said, gave the tickets. Whatever in the world does the woman have against me?” and Mrs. Anderson looked ready to weep.

  But Homer was almost an
gry, “Against you? It was a thoughtful gesture for the wife of a Flint vice president to make to a stranger and a—a subordinate.”

  “Subordinate?” Mrs. Anderson asked, her face reddening. “Shall we kneel as before the pope or only curtsey as before the Queen of England.”

  “Don’t be facetious,” Homer said, reaching for Judy. “It’s just an informal gathering, nothing to get excited about; business, mostly, hardly social. Mr. McKeckeran told me in person; we were to have this conference tomorrow morning, but it was decided that Mr. O’Hara should go to St. Louis early tomorrow—labor trouble—so Mrs. McKeckeran suggested that we all meet in their home. Wasn’t that thoughtful? He said just come as you are about seven-thirty or eight, and by the time we eat and you get ready—”

  “Ready?” Mrs. Anderson asked with an exaggerated showing of surprise.

  “Of course.”

  “But I’m honest. Come as you are, the duchess said; so I go as I am.”

  “Lena, dear, you must put on a dress and different shoes.”

  “You mean put on the dress and the shoes. This suit is okay; old, I bought it before I married, when I could afford nice things, but the cloth’s good.”

  “But it would look—well, disrespectful—an old tweed suit in the evening.”

  Mrs. Anderson followed him to the door, her eyes too bright, her jaw too hard. “I will in this sweater and skirt be just as respectful as at Turbis’. In respectful silence I will sit and listen to talk of shines, kikes, and baseball. I may even smile on the jokes about barefoot hillbillies and ignorant ministers from the South. Ugh, I hate myself.”

  They were gone at last, and Enoch, who had been listening from the doorway, said: “Gee, Mom, ain’t that somethen? They’re gonna see a man that knows old man Flint hisself.”

  “All th same,” Clovis, who had also been listening, said, “I’ll bet she goes as she is. She’ll knuckle down so much an no more,” and his voice was envious.

  Clovis was right. When Gertie went to baby sit, she found a restive, pink-faced Homer, freshly shirted and shaven, snappish, yet somehow subdued. Mrs. Anderson, serene and pleasant in the sweater and skirt, was saying just as Gertie went in, “Tell her, dear, that my mink coat and Paris creations are in storage—wheat storage in Muncie, Indiana.”

  However, when they came back, less than three hours later, Mrs. Anderson seemed curiously subdued, silent, until Gertie asked, “Well, how was it?”

  “I don’t ex—”

  But Homer, taking off his rubbers, cried behind her, his voice bubbly gay: “Now, Lena, my darling, you know you had a wonderful time. Why, you were the hit of the evening. Mrs. McKeckeran took to you at once, and asked you to help out with the refreshments. You two were gone so long in the kitchen, you must have had quite a conversation, though I must say I had expected highballs instead of tea.”

  Mrs. Anderson turned to Gertie, who was getting into her coat. “It’s really pathetic. The war has forced—not forced, either; nothing forces Mrs. Mc—Bales—”

  “McKeckeran,” Homer cried.

  “Homer, dear, Mr. Flint has sixty-two vice presidents. It’s like trying to remember the names of both the major and the minor prophets. Anyway,” she went on, looking into Gertie’s eyes, which had met her own on the name “Bales,” “this poor woman has through patriotism cut her staff by at least nine-tenths.” She clucked her tongue. “She doesn’t even have a full-time butler any more. He works in one of the Flint plants, and only helps out occasionally. They haven’t even but one chauffeur left, I gathered. Isn’t it pathetic?”

  Homer, in spite of his beaming happiness, was looking slightly pained. “You’ve made up your mind to hate Detroit’s industrial leaders. You certainly can’t compare Mrs. McKeckeran with Mrs. Turbi or Mrs. O’Hara.”

  “Poor ladies,” Mrs. Anderson said, still talking to Gertie, “they were like cheap rayon taffeta against hand-woven silk—a shade too shiny. Mrs. Turbi was dressed as if for a bullfight—bare shoulders. Before the evening was over, her shoulders were one mass of goose bumps, and I think Mrs. Mc—you know, Bales—”

  Homer opened his mouth to protest, but Mrs. Anderson rushed on: “Our lady enjoyed every teeny-weeny bump. She was so kind when she explained—she wore a beat-up old suit, older than this but much, much better, something she’d had made, perhaps in London, years ago—she’s well traveled. But anyway, she was so sweet when she explained to Mrs. Turbi that she’d just got home from her war work and that since Pearl Harbor she’d never dressed for dinner. Isn’t that terrible. And she was even sweeter when she explained to the bare-backed ones that in order to conserve oil she keeps the furnace at sixty. And she has the loveliest maid,” she added as Gertie went out the door. “Her name is Johala. She got back from rolling bandages, she said, just as we were finishing in the kitchen.”

  “How odd, introducing one’s maid,” Homer said, opening the icebox as Gertie went down the steps.

  She stood a moment on her stoop, searching for the stars, but a pour was crimsoning the sky, and there were none. She looked first at the clock when she got in, then hurried into the bedroom to waken Clovis. She saw that the alarm must have gone off, for he lay with the light on, one arm across his eyes, the other flung out of the bed with the silenced alarm clock gripped in his down-hanging hand. She could, she decided, give him five minutes more. He looked so tired. She gently took the clock from him, laid the hand back across his chest, squeezing it a little as she might have caressed Cassie’s hand. He came suddenly out of his half sleeping and smiled at her. “You a tryen to make love to me, Old Woman, when I’m sleepen.”

  She flushed, dropped his hand, and backed confusedly away. “I was jist a thinken, Clovis, that—that, well if all these years we’ve been a liven together I could ha seen Homer ever onct in a while—why I’d never ha quarreled at you atall.”

  “Ain’t it th truth?” he said, getting out of bed. “Ever-time I look at that gigglen yaller-headed fool from Georgia that’s allus a needen me tu fix somethen, I think what would I do if I had to live all th time with a woman like that.” He was suddenly thoughtful, pulling on a shoe. “All th same, Gert, be nice to Homer. You don’t know, he might some day hep me keep a job. Anybody that goes visiten that McKeckeran ain’t peanuts. But,” he added quickly, “don’t be a sayen nothen to Whit an Sophronie; nothen gits a body in bad with them union stewards an sich than to let em think you’re tryen to hug up to th foreman er somebody in the company.”

  She nodded, wondering if she should tell him she had seen the other half of Mrs. McKeckeran, but then maybe Mrs. Bales, the poor and lowly gospel woman, was supposed to live in secret from all of Mr. Flint’s world. Then she forgot the business, in thinking of Cassie, who had been in the back of her mind all evening. “Clovis, don’t you think mebbe one a us ought to go see that teacher right away? She might mebbe want us to do somethen that ud hope Cassie.”

  “Aw, Gert, I’ll go in a day er two. I been aimen to git me some new Sunday shoes. I hate to go looken like a tramp in my work shoes. If you go, it’ll be like that other trip. You cain’t hep it, an some a these people up here thinks people like us is dirt under their feet. An anyhow, I figger it ain’t nothen much. She’ll most likely fergit about it in a day er two.”

  Gertie said nothing more, but in the following days she often found herself wondering what the teacher could have wanted. Cassie, who now spent most of her spare time outdoors, seemed happy enough in spite of her silence in the house, and Gertie had no wish to worry her again by discussing the letter. She thought at times of telling Mrs. Anderson about the business. The woman would agree, she thought, that Clovis, since he insisted on going himself, ought to go now.

  But with a body like Mrs. Anderson, there was little chance to talk of anything except the double woman. Wonderings on the how and why of Mrs. McKeckeran now occupied Mrs. Anderson even more than her critical musings on the why and when of Mrs. Daly’s ninth baby, which had since Christmas taken up much of her mind. It seemed
the woman couldn’t think without moving her tongue. Homer’s shirts gave her an excuse for dropping in on Gertie, so that it was Gertie who had to listen. “You know,” she said, one morning three or four days after the McKeckeran visit as she pinched a bit of crust from a freshly baked banana cream pie, “I am beginning to feel, just feel, of course, that it wasn’t Mrs. McKeckeran we saw in the alley. But I know of course that there can’t be, just can’t be, two women exactly alike, each with an exactly alike Johala.”

  Gertie yawned over the ironing of a shirt collar. “Looks like she would ha said somethen when you two was in th kitchen.”

  “Oh, didn’t I tell you about the kitchen? Homer would give his thesis to know. You see, she’s no daughter of some man-killing day laborer turned mechanic like”—she looked swiftly about her—“like old man Flint. She’s so very certain of her position, she can dirty her own hands in her own kitchen.

  “Nothing happened in the kitchen except it must have been the way I looked at the little cakes laid out in the pantry. She asked me if I were hungry. Of course I told her that I’d been so upset at the idea of having to give up another evening to my husband’s business that I couldn’t eat. Funny, I could say that, but never ask her the one simple question that was burning a hole in me. I could even eat the large and luscious sandwich she fixed of all the things that Homer doesn’t like me to buy and the children can’t eat, but I never could say, ‘How’s gospel work?’”

  “It would ha plagued her,” Gertie said.

  “She would have loved it. She would only have had to smile that sweet, sweet smile and say, ‘You’re mistaken, my dear,’ and before all the others I would have been the mistaken fool.” Mrs. Anderson drew a deep breath, her face reddened with anger. “I’m certain she knew before I came that I was I. Perhaps from your carving on Homer’s desk, or I might have given her my name; I keep trying to remember, but the children were acting up so. I think I even stuttered when the door opened, and there she was smiling, certain I would be the courtier’s wife before the naked emperor, afraid to open my mouth and say that he was naked.”