The Last Leaf of Harlem

by Lionel Bascom

  “Of course,’ she said quickly, not taking time to examine her feelings to see if she felt any wounded pride. “As a matter of fact, they’re here in the attic. I’ll get them.”

  She rose. He rose too. “Did you really think I wrote those letters?” he asked boyishly. He felt rather flattered.

  “Why, no,” she said suddenly. “I suppose I didn’t mean, I knew they weren’t written by the man I thought I had married.”

  He gave her a little rueful smile. “Do you suppose if I’d written my own letters we might have made a go of it?”

  “Why, I don’t know,” she said truthfully, because she didn’t.

  Gosh, neither do I,” he said.

  And for a moment they looked at each other curiously. Then their eyes fell, and she left the room.

  Made for Each Other

  News Syndicate

  August 25, 1947

  Summary: Housekeeping comes easy to some women, while others just can’t seem to get the knack of it. But read about Mrs. Owens and her rescuer, Mrs. Marsden.

  The doorbell chimed. Mrs. Owens hurried down the hall. Her face had a harassed expression. She was at sixes and sevens trying to do several things at once with her usual domestic incompetence. She had got her husband off to work, her children off to school with breakfasts that were slightly burned. Lunches weren’t quite in order. What mysterious thing happened in your daughter’s blue socks on the day she wore her blue dress? Why did your husband want a clean shirt whenever there wasn’t one in his drawer? How could your son cold-heartedly expect pants when he knew how badly you sewed?

  Why did breakfast take so many dishes? Why did her fingers turn to thumbs in the kitchen? There were still the beds to do. And the lumps that no magic of hers could smooth out. Then the hopeless task of straightening up the living room. She (could) not think about dinner. She had run out of her few ideas about food.

  Mrs. Owens sighed and opened the door.

  “Good morning,” (said) the caller brightly.

  Mrs. Owens resisted the temptation to say, “Is it?” She smiled … and returned the greeting.

  The woman who faced her was very well dressed. Mrs. Owens felt very disheveled beside her. The intelligent face showed strength and graciousness and her voice and demeanor suggested a background of gentility. She looked like the kind of person who would never live in chaos. Mrs. Owens decided against asking her to step inside while she stated her business.

  “I’m Mrs. Marsden,” the lady said.

  A SURPRISE CALLER WITH A SURPRISE

  ‘Oh,” said Mrs. Owens politely but on an … inflection that would indicate to Mrs. Marsden that he name meant nothing to her.

  “Are you Mrs. Owens?” Mrs. Marsden asked rather anxiously. “It’s she I want to see.

  Have I the right address?”

  “Why, yes. “I’m Mrs. Owens,” said the owner of the name in a tone of surprise. She was not so much surprised. She was not so much surprised to be acknowledging this fact as she was to be confronted with it by a perfect stranger.

  “Then may I come in?”

  “Please do,” said Mrs. Owens, reluctantly.

  She ushered her visitor into the living room. She tried to act nonchalant but it was not her nature.

  She said in a rush, “Please don’t look around. I can’t keep a house clean/. The art of it eludes me. The wonderful person who’s been with me for years had to leave suddenly to go west to live with her ailing mother. I’ve advertised for another housekeeper and I’ve taken leave from my office while I wait for an angel to answer my prayer.” She remembered her manners. “Do sit down.”

  Mrs. Marsden sat down. She said quietly, “I’m not an angel, but I’m here.”

  Mrs. Owens stared, unable to reconcile this woman’s appearance with her purpose. “You mean you’ve come about the job?” she asked incredulously.

  The expectant look faded from Mrs. Marsden’s eyes. “do you think I’m too old?”

  “It’s not that,” Mrs. Owens said quickly and sincerely. For Mrs. Marsden looked far ore capable than Mrs. Owen felt. “I meant,’ she fumbled, “you jut don’t look like a housekeeper.”

  Mrs. Marsden tried to keep the indignation out of her voice. My family always thought I was a very good one. I’m sure I was keeping house before you were born.”

  “Well, said Mrs. Owens, feeling squelched, “I suppose you were in the employ of a very rich family.”

  For she would never have managed to dress so expensively on the kind of salary Mrs. Owens could pay. I’m afraid you’d find us very different. Maybe my ad wasn’t clear. I didn’t mean the kind of housekeeper who just supervised the other servants.

  It was Mrs. Marsden who looked defeated now. “We keep misunderstanding each other. I’ve never worked outside of my home. I didn’t stop t think that I hadn’t any paid experience, and no references. I read your ad, and all I thought about was getting here ahead of anyone else.

  She looked around the room, though she had been cautioned not to. It would be a nice room when knowing hands had charge of it. But what really took Mrs. Marsden’s eye was the framed picture of a little boy and girl on the table beside her. Of course, they were in school at this hour, and she was sorry she would go away without ever seeing them. They made her remember her busy young motherhood. She smiled at their smiling faces.

  A PERFECT SOLUTION FOR DOUBLE DILEMMA

  Mrs. Owens was watching her. “They’re my children,” she explained.. “I suppose,” she said, rather resentfully “you think I should stay home and take care of them. I tried it when they were quite small, and I wasn’t a successful (at) it. My husband and children find me much better company when I’m working at a job I enjoy than when I’m making a gloomy failure of being a housekeeper.

  Mrs. Marsden said gravely, “don’t think I don’t understand how you feel. I do. However, it seems to other people, one’s happiest doing what one does best. When my husband died and my daughters married, I moved to a small hotel. I’d always had a big house that kept me busy all day long. Everyone including my daughters, encouraged me to give it up and be waited on for the rest of my life. But I’ve been living in a hotel for a year now, and I can’t even make up my own bed without offending the chambermaid.” She said wryly. If I went to live with either of my daughters, they’d let me make up my own bed, but that’s about all. I brought them up to be perfect housekeepers. And I’d only be interfering if I tried to help.”

  “Help me,” Mrs. Marsden,” Mrs. Owens said fervently. “I think we were made for each other.”

  Then may I consider myself hired?” Mrs. Marsden said happily.

  “Please do,” Mrs. Owens implored, I know you’ve got to go home and pack. And I really don’t expect you to take over for a day or two. But Mrs. Marsden, before you go, what would be nice for dinner?”

  “Why, I’ll make up a market list,” Mrs. Marsden said efficiently. “And if you’ll get the groceries for me, I’ll borrow your apron and tidy u this room while you’re gone and I’ll start the dinner before I leave. If you’d like to go back to work tomorrow, I’d be glad to come back to work tonight.”

  Mrs. Marsden, you really are an angel,” Mrs. Owens said with awe.

  “Oh no,” Mrs. Marsden said for the second time, but this time she did not say it quite so positively.

  Homecoming

  News Syndicate

  April 1957

  Ma Malloy couldn’t help feeling excited and happy as she set the supper table. For the first time in years all of her children were home. They were upstairs now, getting settled in their old rooms, catching up on each other’s news.

  They had come without their families, so it was an easy thing to fall into the old ways, the old affections: to forget for awhile that they had closer, stronger ties than those that once had bound them to a favorite brother or sister.

  Why, there was a time when she couldn’t told the difference between Herbie and Harry, so alike they were in every way. Now, though th
ey lived in the same city, they moved in separate spheres, with wives who were very conscious of the disparity in their incomes. The constraint they had come to feel in the presence of their wives made them avoid family gatherings whenever a plausible excuse made it possible.

  Hearing them joyfully ragging each other, their delight in being together so strong to be subdued by any other emotion. Ma knew that the difference between them was only superficial, a shyness … that each felt because he had more or less than his brother.

  UNDER THE SPELL

  The others too, Joan and Pam, Pete and Johnny had fallen under the spell of homecoming. Joan, the … beauty, and Pam, who had always called herself plain, were talking softly instead of shrilly, which meant they were relating on common ground instead of shooting from opposite poles.

  Joan had wanted her name in lights and Pam had wanted six children. It was Pam, chic and clever, whose name appeared monthly on the editorial pages of a fashion magazine, while Joan a suburban anonymity, felt cheated because all that her beauty got her was an early marriage and a house full of children. But tonight, childless Pam was not jealous of Joan’s completeness and Joan was not jealous of Pam’s career.

  Pete and Johnny, both in politics and stepping on each other’s neck to reach the top of the heap, always spoiled their rare visits home by heated argument, with one or the other leaving summarily. Long ago, Pete, the elder, had been Johnny’s protector, and Johnny had worshipped the ground Pete walked on. Tonight they had put politics aside in their need to share the same emotion, each searching the face of his brother for the old likeness of himself.

  Ma set the steaming platters in the center of the table. The children would say she had spread a feast. But she had given little thought to this meal, just taken the first things that came to hand from the freezer to spare herself the grieving of being mocked by the over bountiful table if nobody came to sit down to it.

  Just a month before, almost to the day, she and Pa had spent Christmas eve staring at the foolish tree all bedecked and glowing for the sons and daughters whose telephone calls and telegrams had broken the heart of Christmas and made all the happy days of preparation seem like self inflicted punishment, had not come.

  None of the children had come, though, of course, none of them had known that all of them would find some valid excuse for staying away. They were good children, really. It was just that they were still too young to know that time had two faces, one for them, and one, less benign for the old.

  Pa had set such store by their coming. Though he went about his daily chores, not saying much, and saying that off-hand, Ma knew Pa from all their married years, and she knew Pa’s heart was full to bursting at the thought, at the hope of having all the children home for Christmas.

  He had seen them so infrequently in these last years. She had visited them in their various homes a time or two, but Pa never had, he being bound to the farm as if shackles and hating travel more than sickness. He use to say reasonably enough that his children knew the way back home better that he knew the way to wherever it was they hung their hat.

  Tonight they had all come back, letting none of their private concerns dissuade them. Without laying blame this way or that, Ma couldn’t help thinking that if they had made that same effort at Christmas, things might have been different, like going this road you meet a known friend, and going that road, you pass a dark stranger.

  She went to the foot of the stairs. “Supper’s on the table. Come get it while it’s hot.”

  She knew their individual steps so well, the quick one, the slow one, the heavy one, and the light one. For a moment, the years rolled back for Ma. They rolled back as far as when it was the most natural thing in the world for her to stand at the foot of the stairs calling the children to supper. As always, Pa was waiting at the head of the table to ask God’s blessing on their togetherness.

  HE SITS DOWN AT HIS OLD PLACE

  She shooed them into the dining room. “You go sit down while I get the coffee.”

  When she returned, Pete, her eldest, was hovering. “Ma,” he aid diffidently, “where do you want me to sit?”

  “My goodness,” she said, “next to the rolls, of course. You know you always sit next to the bread like you never had enough bread in your life.”

  He sat down in his old place and smiled at her. “You should have been resting.”

  She set the huge coffeepot down before Herbie, who had teased her for coffee ever since he was a toddler, and said briefly to Pete, “It’s my day for baking. I wouldn’t have known what to do with my hands.”

  Having made herself conscious of her hands, she began to fidget with her apron, while her eyes darted up and down the table to see that each plate was plentiful.

  “Sit down, Ma,” Pam said gently. “You’ve never learned to stay off your feet.”

  She sat down in Pa’s. place and heard the little movement of unease that went through her children as if for the first time they were afraid her courage might fail.

  “I’ll sit here a minute and ask the blessing. Then I’ll go up and change.”

  “You eat first, Ma,” Joan urged. “You’ve go to keep up your strength.”

  “I had a snack with Carrie Norton just before you came. I was snacking all day with this one and that who came in. It was nice to have them drop in. Made the kitchen so cozy. While you children eat, I’ll get ready.”

  SHE TRIED TO EXPLAIN

  “We don’t want you to go with us, Ma,” Pete said firmly. “We’d rather you spared yourself tonight. It won’t be easy for you tomorrow. “We’ll just stay a minute with Pa, and come right back.”

  They looked at her tenderly, protectively, as if they wished they could ease her inward grieving.

  They still had most of their future before them. They didn’t understand. She tried to explain. “When you’re old as I am, you look at things different. You take your happiness wherever you find it. You can’t afford to pick and choose the time and place. I grieved for your Pa before you came, and I’ll grieve again after you go. But now I can’t take time to cry. I don’t know when you’ll come again. I want to make every minute count. I want to remember the joy of having children home. My mind don’t want to dwell on how you came home to bury Pa. Forgive an old woman for her selfishness.”

  She bowed her head and asked God’s blessings on their being together, as if Pa, behind her shut eyes, was back in his prime, with the children still in the spring of their growth, and her world still safe from the separation of time.

  Ma opened her eyes. Pete had a sprinkle of gray in his hair and Pam had a tired sag to her shoulders. But Ma saw what she wanted to see, felt what she wanted to feel, and smiled at her children because it was like old times.

  Summer Setting

  Copyright 1957 News Syndicate Co., Inc.

  May 21, 1957

  When Beth asked Sara to take teenage Penny for August, Sara couldn’t say no.

  Beth was her favorite sister. Besides, Beth had been ill, and a rest from Penny would speed her recuperation.

  But Sara couldn’t forgive her sister, Hallie, for making the same request of Jill. Except that was Hallie’s way. She was not going to let Sara do more for one niece than she did for the other.

  They were sweet kids, fourteen year old Penny and fifteen year old Jill. Any other summer she would have enjoyed devoting her time to them. But this year her vacation plans had included a more romantic role than indulgent aunt. she had set the stage for a proposal of marriage, and a couple of kids would only clutter up the scenery.

  Until this spring Sara had never thought she would want to marry again. Her marriage to Ken had been so perfect and so brief. the war and Kens joining up made each subsequent day a day to which they gave full meaning. then Ken was sent overseas and the letters she wrote and received were testaments of love and longing. When the telegram of regret came, Sara felt that perfection had ended its span on earth.

  It was years before she realized that the reason
no other man measured up to her shining image of Ken was because other men grew older. Other men had the problems of living to line their faces and sober their laughter while Ken had escaped into timelessness with his youth and joy intact.

  KEN WAS YOUNG FOREVER

  And facing the fact t hat Ken was young forever, and she was fifteen years older, Sara gave up her dream of him, and waked from her self-indulgent sleep to the world of her maturity, in which she moved like one not really part of it.

  There before her was Clay, as he had been for a long time. Clay with that quizzical smile in his eyes, waiting for her to comedown from her ivory tower. Sara, seeing Clay really for the first time, and liking, then loving what she saw, was impatient to prove herself a woman, a woman ready to be a wife.

  No occasion presented itself until summer. Clays newspaper sent him abroad on a three-month survey, with his return set for late July, and his vacation to begin in August. Sara, who worked in advertising, writing glamorous ads that she believed in completely, who considered it a woman’s bound duty to be beautiful, arranged her own vacation for August.

  She owned a story book cottage on a lovely island. A fashionable inn overlooked the bay. Before Clay left for Europe, Sara suggested the inn for his holiday. In August there were always interesting people at the inn. and whenever he wanted to escape their activities, he would find her cottage a quiet retreat, where the days flowed one into one, calm and serene that was what she had promised Clay, the peace that he would have with her.

  Now, three months later, here she was waiting at the wharf for Penny and Jill with Clay arriving by plane with the hour. she had expected clay, but Penny and Jill were arriving a whole week sooner than planned. some young friend of theirs was driving down with her family. she had begged her mother, and Penny and Jill had begged theirs, to let them drive down with her. Nobody had considered Sara’s feelings in the matter.