In the evenings Grandpa sat in the billiard room in a leather chair, smoking cigars and reading the newspapers. He smoked thirteen or fourteen cigars a day and the room reeked of them. Occasionally, to my delight, he varied the cigars by smoking a long church-warden pipe. There was a rack of pipes on the wall at his side, and a plaster plaque of Dante’s head. I sat under the big table, and pretended it was a ship, wheezing slightly. One of the table’s large bulging legs became a sturdy mast. (I had once been taken aboard a docked sailing vessel, to my intense delight.) Grandma read the Literary Digest under the red lamp; then she played solitaire.
In the library there were some bookcases filled with dark leatherbound books, but I was the only one who ever used it. After two months or so of my sojourn, I got up my courage and slid open the glass doors. The carpet was a deep rich blue. There was a mahogany desk in the middle of the room, with a brass desk set and a paperweight in the form of three lifelike bronze cigars. It was heavy, but I picked it up many times and found it smelled of metal, not cigars.
I frequently had indirect questions aimed at me, like “Wouldn’t some little girl like to take piano lessons?” So Miss Darling arrived. I was supposed to practice fifteen minutes at a time. The staves were enormous and I wrote notes in them as large as watermelons. I couldn’t touch the pedals, of course. But how I loved the sound of the wide yellow piano keys!
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The War was on. In school at recess we were marched into the central hall, class by class, to the music of an upright piano, a clumping march that has haunted me all my life and I have never yet placed. There we pledged allegiance to the flag and sang war songs: “Joan of Arc, they are ca-alllll-ing you.” I hated the songs, and most of all I hated saluting the flag. I would have refused if I had dared. In my Canadian schooling the year before, we had started every day with “God Save the King” and “The Maple Leaf Forever.” Now I felt like a traitor. I wanted us to win the War, of course, but I didn’t want to be an American. When I went home to lunch, I said so. Grandma was horrified; she almost wept. Shortly after, I was presented with a white card with an American flag in color at the top. All the stanzas of “Oh, say, can you see” were printed on it in dark blue letters. Every day I sat at Grandma’s feet and attempted to recite this endless poem. We didn’t sing because she couldn’t stay in tune, she said. Most of the words made no sense at all. “Between his loved home and the war’s desolation” made me think of my dead father, and conjured up strange pictures in my mind.
Aunt Jenny gave a “War Party” to raise money for some organization, perhaps the Red Cross. I was allowed to help set the table. All I remember were the red, white, and blue bonbons and the red, white, and blue flowers. Mrs. Barton’s mother continued to knit helmets and wristers and Grandma decided that I, too, should learn to knit. On a pair of needles that seemed awfully long I began to knit and purl some small squares to make an afghan, but I hated it. I cherish the memory of the colors, half bright pink and half pea-green, but knitting I thought almost as bad as the “numbers” game. It reached such a point that I would actually drop stitches when Grandma left the room, and so most of the afghan was finally knitted by her. She decided I wasn’t any good with my hands. I have never knitted since.
There were the war cartoons, several big books of them: German helmets and cut-off hands haunted us. Aunt Jenny spoke of such things and was shushed. Because of the “Belgians,” I ate my mashed potatoes. We were hoarders; in the closet under the front stairs were four barrels of sugar, which hardened like rock. In the kitchen one evening the cook hammered it with a rolling pin with all her might, redder than ever. There was something conspiratorial about the scene, which I associated with Aunt Jenny. Since she was rarely at home, I got the idea that her “War Work” was some kind of full-time profession. In Nova Scotia the soldiers, some of whom I actually knew, wore beautiful tam-o’-shanters with thistles and other insignia on them. When they got dressed up, they wore kilts and sporrans. One of them had come courting my young aunt in this superb costume, carrying a swagger stick, and let me examine him all over. The Johnny-get-your-gun type of soldier in Worcester seemed very drab to me. I missed black Nanny and the little gray cat, Tippy, named after the song. I liked “Tipperary” and “The long, long trail” and “Every nice girl loves a sailor” much better than the Worcester songs. I particularly hated “Joan of Arc, they are ca-alllll-ing you.”
They talked about high prices at the table; I heard that eggs were five cents apiece. And the price of clothes! I rarely spoke, but this time I felt I had something to contribute. I said, “The last time my aunt in Nova Scotia bought a pair of shoes, they cost three dollars.” Everyone laughed. I lost my courage about making conversation at the dinner table and I have never regained it.
Sunday morning there was always oyster stew and muffins. Afterwards Grandma and Uncle Neddy would argue; it seemed a Sunday-morning ritual. They always argued until it was time for Grandma to put on her high black satin hat and be driven to the Pilgrim Congregational Church. I was frightened; I thought they were really fighting and were about to come to blows. They would walk up and down together, round and round the billiard room, even out and around the house. Grandpa meanwhile would be reading the Sunday-morning papers, but would chip in a loud comment once in a while: “I told you that stock was no good, Ned. You’re throwing your money away.” “Jenny has no brains; never had. That woman is a damn fool.” Sometimes he’d snort: “Why don’t you two do your fighting someplace else? I swear I’ll go down to the hotel.” Finally I realized the sessions always ended with Uncle Neddy kissing Grandma, looking pleased with himself, and helping her into her black coat.
The dressmaker came. Her name, oddly, was Miss Cotton. Grandma was fond of her and she ate her lunch on a tray, while the fat orange canary shrieked overhead. She made me four hideous dresses, too long, too dark, and with decorations made from leftovers of Grandma’s dresses. (Forty-three years later I can scarcely bear to think of those dresses.) Even Grandpa said, “Aren’t that child’s skirts too long?” Blue serge, large pockets, everything outlined with a silver braid that had a thread of red running through it. Then Grandma decided I should have long hair and braids, like “nice little girls.” Emma had short hair, but that didn’t seem to count in my favor.
Grandpa once asked me to get his eyeglasses from his bedroom, which I had never been in. It was mostly white and gold, surprisingly feminine for him. The carpet was gold-colored, the bed was fanciful, brass and white, and the furniture was gold and white too. There was a high chest of drawers, a white bedspread, muslin curtains, a set of black leatherbound books near the bed, photographs of Grandma and my aunts and uncles at various ages, and two large black bottles (of whiskey, I realized years later). There were also medicine bottles and the “machines.” There were two of them in black boxes, with electric batteries attached to things like stethoscopes — some sort of vibrator or massager perhaps. What he did with them I could not imagine. The boxes were open and looked dangerous. I reached gingerly over one to get his eyeglasses, and saw myself in the long mirror: my ugly serge dress, my too long hair, my gloomy and frightened expression.