I’m telling you the truth, Polly. I am not exaggerating. She went to the mirror, took a lot of pins out of her hair, and let it down. There was a great deal of it. I suppose she could sit on it although I didn’t ask. I said that it was very beautiful several times. Then she said that she had known I would appreciate it because Lovell had told her I was artistic and interested in beautiful things. Well she displayed her hair for some time and then began the arduous business of getting it back into place again. It was hard work. Then she went on to say that some people thought her hair was dyed and that this made her angry because she felt that women who dyed their hair were immoral. I asked her if she would like another cup of tea and she said no. Then I asked her if she had ever heard Lovell play the piano and she said no, they didn’t have a piano. Then she looked at Lovell and said that it was time to go. Lovell drove her home and then came back to ask, I suppose, for some words of approval. Of course my heart was broken in two. Here was a great musical career ruined by a head of hair. I told him I never wanted to see her again. He said he was going to marry her and I said I didn’t care what he did.
Lovell married Donna-Mae. Uncle Abbott went to the wedding, but Percy kept her word and never saw her daughter-in-law again. Lovell came to the house four times a year to pay a ceremonial call on his mother. He would not go near the piano. He had not only given up his music, he hated music. His simple-minded taste for obsceneness seemed to have transformed itself into simple-minded piety. He had transferred from the Episcopal church to the Hirshmans’ Lutheran congregation, which he attended twice on Sundays. They were raising money to build a new church when I last spoke with him. He spoke intimately of the Divinity. “He has helped us in our struggles, again and again. When everything seemed hopeless, He has given us encouragement and strength. I wish I could get you to understand how wonderful He is, what a blessing it is to love Him….” Lovell died before he was thirty, and since everything must have been burned, I don’t suppose there was a trace left of his musical career.
But the darkness in the old house seemed, each time we went there, to deepen. Abbott continued his philandering, but when he went fishing in the spring or hunting in the fall Percy was desperately unhappy without him. Less than a year after Lovell’s death, Percy was afflicted with some cardiovascular disease. I remember one attack during Sunday dinner. The color drained out of her face, and her breathing became harsh and quick. She excused herself and was mannered enough to say that she had forgotten something. She went into the living room and shut the door, but her accelerated breathing and her groans of pain could be heard. When she returned, there were large splotches of red up the side of her face. “If you don’t see a doctor, you will die,” Uncle Abbott said.
“You are my husband and you are my doctor,” she said.
“I have told you repeatedly that I will not have you as a patient.”
“You are my doctor.”
“If you don’t come to your senses, you will die.”
He was right, of course, and she knew it. Now, as she saw the leaves fall, the snow fall, as she said goodbye to friends in railroad stations and vestibules, it was always with a sense that she would not do this again. She died at three in the morning, in the dining room, where she had gone to get a glass of gin, and the family gathered for the last time at her funeral.
There is one more incident. I was taking a plane at Logan Airport. As I was crossing the waiting room, a man who was sweeping the floor stopped me.
“Know you,” he said thickly. “I know who you are.”
“I don’t remember,” I said.
“Tm Cousin Beaufort,” he said. “Tm your cousin Beaufort.”
I reached for my wallet and took out a ten-dollar bill.
“I don’t want any money,” he said. “I’m your cousin. I’m your cousin Beaufort. I have a job. I don’t want any money.”
“How are you, Beaufort?” I asked.
“Lovell and Percy are dead,” he said. “They buried them in the earth.”
“I’m late, Beaufort,” I said. “I’ll miss my plane. It was nice to see you. Goodbye.” And so off to the sea.
The Fourth Alarm
I SIT IN THE SUN drinking gin. It is ten in the morning. Sunday. Mrs. Uxbridge is off somewhere with the children. Mrs. Uxbridge is the housekeeper. She does the cooking and takes care of Peter and Louise.
It is autumn. The leaves have turned. The morning is windless, but the leaves fall by the hundreds. In order to see anything—a leaf or a blade of grass—you have, I think, to know the keenness of love. Mrs. Uxbridge is sixty-three, my wife is away, and Mrs. Smithsonian (who lives on the other side of town) is seldom in the mood these days, so I seem to miss some part of the morning as if the hour had a threshold or a series of thresholds that I cannot cross. Passing a football might do it but Peter is too young and my only football-playing neighbor goes to church.
My wife, Bertha, is expected on Monday. She comes out from the city on Monday and returns on Tuesday. Bertha is a good-looking young woman with a splendid figure. Her eyes, I think, are a little close together and she is sometimes peevish. When the children were young she had a peevish way of disciplining them. “If you don’t eat the nice breakfast Mummy has cooked for you before I count three,” she would say, “I will send you back to bed. One. Two. Three….” I heard it again at dinner. “If you don’t eat the nice dinner Mummy has cooked for you before I count three I will send you to bed without any supper. One. Two. Three….” I heard it again. “If you don’t pick up your toys before Mummy counts three Mummy will throw them all away. One. Two. Three….” So it went on through the bath and bedtime and one two three was their lullaby. I sometimes thought she must have learned to count when she was an infant and that when the end came she would call a countdown for the Angel of Death. If you’ll excuse me I’ll get another glass of gin.
When the children were old enough to go to school, Bertha got a job teaching social studies in the sixth grade. This kept her occupied and happy and she said she had always wanted to be a teacher. She had a reputation for strictness. She wore dark clothes, dressed her hair simply, and expected contrition and obedience from her pupils. To vary her life she joined an amateur theatrical group. She played the maid in Angel Street and the old crone in Desmonds Acres. The friends she made in the theatre were all pleasant people and I enjoyed taking her to their parties. It is important to know that Bertha does not drink. She will take a Dubonnet politely but she does not enjoy drinking.