I had thought to get undressed without turning on the light, and I found my dresser, where there was supposed to be a package of matches. I found my comb and a pair of earrings and what seemed in the dark to be some small furry animal; after a gasping minute I succeeded in identifying it as one of Sally’s slippers, although I could not imagine what it was doing on my dresser unless Sally had been dancing up there in front of the mirror again.
“Who’s that?” said my husband suddenly in the darkness.
“It’s the Good Fairy,” I said. “Didn’t you leave a tooth under your pillow?”
“Oh,” he said. Then, after a minute, “How was the poker game?”
“If you’re going to chatter,” I said, “I’ll turn on the light and stop falling over the furniture.” I turned and tossed Sally’s slipper to him. “Here,” I said.
“Ark,” said my husband, thrashing.
“It’s only Sally’s slipper,” I said. I turned on the light. “You don’t have to kill it,” I said. He had the slipper under his pillow and was beating it with his fist.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” I asked. “It’s late.”
“I was asleep,” he said. He doubled his pillow, put it against the headboard, and sat back comfortably. “How was the poker game?”
“We had the most marvelous food,” I said. “Peggy brought some of those little hot sausage rolls, and Helen brought that shrimp stuff she makes, of course, and—”
“Did you win?”
“And everyone loved that cucumber mix I took, and I had to give Jean the recipe because she was so crazy about it, and Linda brought a kind of sour cream and clam soufflé stuff but I thought it had too much horseradish in it.”
“Did you play poker?”
“Don’t be silly—why would we have a ladies’ poker game and not play poker? I like horseradish, ordinarily, but when you’ve got other things with it, it shouldn’t be so strong, even though of course you can always taste clams.”
“Did you win?”
“Shh,” I said. “You’ll wake the children.”
I was brushing my hair, and he went and got a drink of water and when he came back I said, “Listen, does three of a kind beat a flush?”
“What?” he said. “Oh. Well, no, it doesn’t.”
“Well, that’s what I said,” I told him, “and I kept arguing and arguing, but Helen said she knew perfectly well, and we were going to call up you or one of the other husbands and ask them, but you know how Linda always gets to crying at the least little thing? So of course there was nothing we could do, but anyway I’m glad to know I was right.”
“Did you win?”
“Listen,” I said, “when you come home late from a poker game and you’re tired and the house is all dark and you try to get undressed in the dark and you’re all worn out, do I—”
“Okay,” he said. “Good night.”
“Good night,” I said.
• • •
Day after day after day I went around my house picking things up. I picked up books and shoes and toys and socks and shirts and gloves and boots and hats and handkerchiefs and puzzle pieces and pennies and pencils and stuffed rabbits and bones the dogs had left under the living room chairs. I also picked up tin soldiers and plastic cars and baseball gloves and sweaters and children’s pocketbooks with nickels inside and little pieces of lint off the floor. Every time I picked up something I put it down again somewhere else where it belonged better than it did in the place I found it. Nine times out of ten I did not notice what I was picking up or where I put it until sometime later when someone in the family needed it; then, when Sally said where were her crayons I could answer at once: kitchen windowsill, left. If Barry wanted his cowboy hat I could reply: playroom, far end of bookcase. If Jannie wanted her arithmetic homework, I could tell her it was under the ashtray on the dining room buffet. I could locate the little nut that came off Laurie’s bike wheel, and the directions for winding the living room clock. I could find the recipe for the turkey cutlets Sally admired and the top to my husband’s fountain pen; I could even find, ordinarily, the little celluloid strips which went inside the collar of his nylon shirt.
That was, of course, entirely automatic, like still remembering the home telephone number of my college roommate and being able to recite “Oh, what is so rare as a day in June”; if I could not respond at once, identifying object and location in unhesitating answer to the question, the article was very apt to remain permanently lost. Like Jannie’s pink Easter-egg hat, which disappeared—let me see; it was the day Laurie got into the fight with the Haynes boys, and the porch rocker got broken—make it the end of October. We had many small places in our big house where an Easter-egg hat could get itself hopelessly hidden, so when Jannie asked one night at dinner, the end of October, “Who took my Easter-egg hat?” and I found myself without an immediate answer, it was clear that the hat had taken itself off, and although we searched halfheartedly, Jannie had to wear a scarf around her head until the weather got cold enough to wear her long-tailed knitted cap.
Laurie’s sneaker was of considerably more moment, since of course he could not play basketball with a scarf tied around his left foot. He came to the top of the back stairs of a Saturday morning and inquired gently who had stolen his sneaker. I opened my mouth to answer, found my mind blank, and closed my mouth again. Laurie came halfway down the stairs and bawled, “Mooooooom, where’d my sneaker get to?” and I still could not answer. “I neeeeeed my sneaker,” Laurie howled, “I got to play baaaaaaasketball.”
“I don’t know,” I called.
“But I need it,” Laurie said. He crashed down the stairs and into the study where I sat reading the morning paper and drinking a cup of coffee. “I got to play basketball, so I need my sneakers. I can’t play on the basketball court without sneakers. So I need—”
“Have you looked? In your room? Under your bed?”
“Yeah, sure.” He thought. “It’s not there, though.”
“Outdoors?”
“Now what would my sneaker be doing outdoors, I ask you? You think I get dressed and undressed out on the lawn, maybe, for the neighbors?”
“Well,” I said helplessly, “you had it last Saturday.”
“I know I had it last Saturday, you think I’m foolish or something?”
“Wait.” I went and stood at the foot of the back stairs and called, “Jannie?”
There was a pause and then Jannie said, sniffling, “Yes?”
“Good heavens,” I said, “are you reading Little Women again?”
Jannie sniffled. “Just the part where Beth dies.”
“Look,” I said, “the sun is shining and the sky is blue and—”
“You seen my sneaker?” Laurie yelled from in back of me.
“No.”
“You sure?”
Jannie came to the top of the stairs, wiping her eyes with her hand. “Hey,” she said, “maybe some girl took it. For a keepsake.”
“Wha?” said Laurie incredulously. “Took my sneaker? Who?”
“Like Mr. Brooke did Meg’s glove, in Little Women, because he was in love with her and they got married.”
“Wha?” For a minute Laurie stared at her, and then he turned deliberately and went back to the door of the study. “My sister,” he announced formally to his father, “has snapped her twigs.”
“That so?” said his father.
“I ask you.” Laurie gestured. “Junk from books,” he said.
“Well, he did,” Jannie insisted, coming down the stairs. “He took it and hid it for ever so long and when Jo found out she—”
“Sally, Barry,” I was calling from the back door. “Has either of you seen Laurie’s sneaker?”
Sally and Barry were dancing on the lawn, turning and flickering among the last fallen leaves; when I called they circled and came to
ward the house, going “cheep-cheep.” “We’re little birds,” Sally explained, coming closer. “Cheep-cheep.”
“Have you seen Laurie’s sneaker?”
“Cheep-cheep.”
“Well?”
Barry thought. “I have unseen it,” he remarked. “I did unsee Laurie’s sneaker a day and a day and a day and a day and many mornings ago.”
“Splendid,” I said. “Sally?”
“No. But don’t worry. I shall get it back for dear Laurie, dear Mommy.”
“If you mean magic you better not let your father hear you, young lady. No,” I said over my shoulder to Laurie, “they haven’t.”
“But I will find it, Laurie dear, never fear, Laurie dear, I will your sneaker find for you.”
“Yeah. So what’m I gonna do?” he asked me. “Play basketball in my socks or something?”
“Are you sure you looked under your bed?”
He looked at me in the manner his favorite television detective reserves for ladies who double-talk the cops. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, lady. I’m sure.”
“Daddy won’t notice,” Sally said busily to Barry. “All this will take is just a little bit of golden magic and Daddy will never notice and there will be dear Laurie’s sneaker just right here.”
“Can I do magic too?”
“You can be my dear helper and you can carry the shovel.”
I went into the study and sat down and Laurie followed me. “And he kept it for weeks and weeks next to his heart,” Jannie was explaining to her father, “and she was looking for it just like Laurie but Mr. Brooke had it all the time.”
“How about that little dark-haired girl?” my husband asked Laurie. “The one who keeps calling you so much?”
“Nah,” Laurie said. “She’s tipped, anyhow. Besides, how could she get my sneaker?” He slapped his forehead. “A veritable madhouse,” he said. “Lose a sneaker and they start criticizing your friends and trying to make out she stole it. Bah.”
He flung himself violently into one of our good plastic leather chairs, which slid back across the floor and into the bookcase. “Bah,” said Laurie. He threw his arms dramatically into the air and let them fall resignedly. “Never find anything around here, that’s the big trouble,” he explained. “Nothing’s ever where you put it. If she—”
“If by she you mean me—” I began ominously.
“Always coming and picking things up and putting them away where a person can’t find them. Always—”
“If you’d put things away neatly when you take them off instead of just throwing everything under your bed—” I stopped to think. “Have you looked under your bed?” I asked.
Laurie stood up and threw his arms wide. “Why was I ever born?” he demanded.
Jannie nodded. “In Beverley Lee, Girl Detective,” she pointed out, “when the secret plans for the old armory get lost, Beverley Lee and her girl friend Piggy, they look for clues.”
“A broken shoelace?” my husband suggested.
“Well, when did you see them last?” I asked reasonably. “Seems to me if you could remember when you had them last, you might remember where you put them then.”
“Yeah. Well,” Laurie said, scowling, “I know I had them last Saturday. But then I took them off and I remember they were on my bookcase because I had to remember to make that map for geography and that was for Wednesday when we had gym—say!” He opened his eyes and his mouth wide. “Gym. I wore them Wednesday to school for gym. So I had them on Wednesday.”
“And Wednesday,” I put in, “was the day you were so late getting home from school because you were hanging around Joe’s with that pack of juvenile delinquents and—”
“I told you six times already, those girls just happened to come by there by accident, how’d I know they’d be around Joe’s? And anyway you got no right to go calling my friends—”
“And you never got your chores done and I kept dinner till six-thirty.”
“That girl called, too,” my husband put in.
“And I must of had my sneakers on all that time, because I never had time because she made me do my chores and then I had to rush through dinner because—because—”
“You were going to the dance,” Jannie said, triumphant. “You got all dressed up, so naturally you put on shoes.”
“Hey!” Laurie swung around and gestured wildly. “I got dressed—”
“You took a shower,” I said. “I remember because—”
He shuddered. “I took a shower because she wouldn’t let me have my good blue pants from the cleaners unless I took a shower.”
“No gentleman escorts a lady to a public function unless he has bathed and dressed himself in completely clean clothes,” my husband said.
“So I undressed in the bathroom because I always do and then when I went out I had this towel around me and I was carrying my clothes and the sneaker and I—”
“I saw it,” I said suddenly. “I did see it after all. I came upstairs to get two aspirin after you had finally gone to the dance and I remember the way the bathroom looked; the floor was sopping and dirty towels all over and the soap and—”
“The sneaker,” Laurie said impatiently, “keep on the subject. The sneaker, the sneaker.”
I meditated. “It was lying just inside the door and one wet towel was half on top of it. And I . . . and I . . .” I thought. “What did I do?”
“Think, think, think.” Laurie stood over me flapping his hands.
“Look,” I said. “I go around this house and I go around this house and I go around this house and I pick up shoes and socks and shirts and hats and gloves and handkerchiefs and books and toys and I always put them down again, someplace where they belong. Now when I went upstairs and saw that mess of a bathroom I had to clean up I would have taken the soap and put it in the soapdish. And I would have taken the bathmat and put it over the edge of the tub. And I would have taken the towels—”
“And put them in the hamper,” Laurie said impatiently. “We know.”
“You do? Because I have often wondered what happens all the times I say to you to put the towels—”
“Yeah, so next time I’ll remember, sure. What about the sneaker?”
“Anyway they were wet so I couldn’t put them in the hamper. I would have hung them over the shower rail to dry so then I could put them in the hamper. And then I would have picked up the sneaker—”
“Laurie’s sneaker is weaker and creaker and cleaker and breaker and fleaker and greaker . . .” Sally wound through the study, eyes shut, chanting. Barry came behind her, doing an odd little two-step. Sally had a pail of sand and a shovel and she was making scattering motions.
“Now wait a minute here,” my husband began.
“It’s all right,” Sally said, opening one eye. “I’m just pretending. This is only sand.”
“We’re just untending,” Barry explained reassuringly. “Bleaker and sneaker and weaker and deaker.”
They filed out. My husband studied the floor morosely. “That certainly looked like magic to me,” he said, “and I don’t like it. Going to have footwear popping up all over, right through the floor, probably wreck the foundations.”
“Reconstruct the scene of the crime,” Jannie said suddenly. “Because Beverley Lee Girl Detective and her girl friend Piggy, that’s what they did. In The Mystery of the Broken Candle, when they had to find the missing will. They reconstructed the scene of the crime. They got everybody there and put everything the way it was—”
“Say!” Laurie looked at her admiringly. “You’re charged, girl. Come on,” he said, making for the stairs, and stopped in the doorway to look compellingly at me. “Come on,” he said.
“And creaker and beaker and leaker and veaker.”
“Gangway, birdbait,” Laurie said. He stopped to pat his younger sister on the he
ad. “You keep sprinkling that there magic, Perfessor. Size six and a half, white.”
“Kindly do not poke the Sally,” said Sally, drawing away stiffly.
“Unpoke, unpoke,” Barry said.
“Come on,” Laurie said to me. He called ahead to Jannie, “You get the towels wet and throw them on the floor. I’ll get the other sneaker and when she comes we’ll have it all ready.”
“You might as well take two more aspirin,” my husband said.
“I might as well,” I said.
Wearily I headed up the stairs, sand grinding underfoot. The bathroom is at the head of the stairs, and by the time I was near the top I could see that everything was prepared. Rigorously, I put my mind back three days. It is eight-thirty in the evening, I told myself. I am coming upstairs to get myself two aspirin. Laurie has just gone to the dance, I have just told him goodbye, get home early, behave yourself, be careful, do you have a clean handkerchief? Jannie is reading. Sally and Barry are asleep. It is eight-thirty Wednesday evening, I am coming to get two aspirin. I came to the top of the stairs, and sighed. The bathroom floor was sopping, the bathmat was soaked and crumpled, wet towels lay on the floor. In the corner, half under a wet towel, was one white sneaker. I asked myself through my teeth how old people had to get before they learned to pick up after themselves and after all our efforts to raise our children in a decent and clean house here they still behaved like pigs and the sooner Laurie grew up and got married and had a wife to pick up after him the better off I would be and maybe I would just take his allowance and hire a full-time nursemaid for him. I picked up the bathmat and hung it over the edge of the tub. I put the soap in the soapdish and hung the towels over the shower rail. I picked up the sneaker and resisted the temptation to slam it into the wastebasket. Then, with the sneaker in my hand, I went to the other side of the hall to the linen closet to get clean towels and a dry bathmat and Laurie and Jannie burst out of the guest room shouting, “You see? You see?”