Over the years, it meant great deal of sacrifice. Betty grew up in an atmosphere where a penny spent was a penny squandered. Her parents did not explain why this was so, at first because she was too young to understand, and then because their savings became a secret too precious to tell until the right time.
If Betty thought they were poorer than they were, that was as it should be. The less she asked for, the more they could save for her. They didn’t know that she thought of herself as a burden, and wished she didn’t have to be, and spent most of her time with her schoolbooks because they gave her too little allowance to do anything except get an occasional Coke at the drugstore where Jimmy Harris worked.
She married him to make her parents’ lives a little easier with one mouth less to feed. Jimmy married her to impress his boss, old Mr. Maybrook, with his stability. A married man was a responsible man, capable of taking full responsibility for a drug store. He deserved to inherit a business he worked harder at than the owner.
Old Mr. Maybrook had a niece somewhere, and her address was somewhere in his cluttered desk. But he had never bothered to write her, and finally she had stopped writing him. He didn’t even know if she was living or dead, so there wasn’t any sense in leaving her a drugstore. Besides, Mr. Maybrook was always saying he was just about ready to sell out when Jimmy came along and let him rest his feet.
Jimmy ran the place except for the prescriptions. Mr. Maybrook sat in back in carpet slippers, nodding most of the time and waking up to fill a prescription.
There weren’t many to fill, since most people went to the bigger and busier drugstore on the next block. But the place did well enough for its size and stock. It was security for an old man who wanted very little, and for a young man, orphaned early, passed around among relatives, even a little was a lot.
Jimmy had a furnished room in a lodging house. With Betty he moved into a somewhat larger room with kitchen privileges.
Before his marriage, his meals had been snacks at the soda fountain. Though Betty did not say so, she was just as excited as Jimmy when they sat down to their first full meal.
Forgiveness Follows Tears
When Betty felt that she could face her parents, she went to see them. Everybody explained, and everybody cried. At last, although the little ceremony was not as they had once planned it, Betty’s parents presented her with her college fund, the bankbook kept secret so long, her name inscribed a few weeks after her birth.
She was overawed by the sum in four figures, and reluctant to accept it. But her parents pressed it on her as their wedding gift. They had never learned to spend money, only to save it. They had no need of it. They wanted Betty and her husband to have more in their marriage than they had had.
Betty want back to the furnished room with a head full of plans, hardly able to wait for Jimmy to come home. They could move to a real apartment house and have furniture of their own. They could make a down payment on a little house. They could buy a car instead of borrowing Mr. Maybrook’s when he felt like lending it. They could go on a honeymoon, a real two-week honeymoon, all dressed up in all new clothes.
There were so many things to do with the money that Betty couldn’t decide which of them they ought to do first. Maybe there were things she hadn’t even thought of, maybe it was better to think a lot more. It had taken her parents so many years to save that money, they had done without so much to save it, that somehow it didn’t seem fair to spend it the very minute she got it. And it wouldn’t be fair to tell Jimmy if she wasn’t ready to spend it. For a while at least she would let it be her secret.
She was very glad she did. Mr. Maybrook died suddenly, and nobody could find a will. But those who were looking found his niece’s address. She arrived, as his nearest of kin, as his heir.
She was perfectly willing to sell Jimmy the drugstore at whatever figure he thought fair, even though she had an offer for the equipment and stock from the drugstore on the next block. But Jimmy could name no figure at all. And Betty could not bring herself to tell him about the nest egg. The other drugstore was too much competition. To buy a business that might fail would be like throwing her parents’ money away.
Jimmy did whatever work he could find to do, mostly part-time. Occasionally they missed a meal, and once in a while their rent fell behind. But Betty kept her secret. If Jimmy knew about the nest egg, he might not try hard enough to find a steady job.
When Betty found out that she was going to have a baby, she was glad the money was still intact. Just knowing she had it, all of it, was as comforting as a warm hand. To spend it, any part of it, would be as foolish as pushing a warm hand away.
As if Betty had willed it by wishing, Jimmy started on a steady job the day he gave her his very last dollar, with no idea where to go to make another one.
It was winter, work was slow everywhere, nobody needed an extra, unskilled hand. But Jimmy kept on asking, kept on trying, walking up this street, and down that, his feet cold, his fingers numb, his stomach pleading. But he didn’t stop and he might have stopped for second wind anyway, if he’d known about the nest egg. He didn’t know and he kept on going until he got a job.
It was just a small job in a small garage. The man who had worked there before Jimmy had left because of the small pay. He was a mechanic, and so was the boss. There wasn’t enough work for two mechanics, and the boss couldn’t pay him the wages he wanted for work he wasn’t doing.
If Jimmy was willing to start at low wages, he had all winter to learn about cars. He’d be learning a mechanic’s trade, and getting paid for doing it. In spring business would begin to pick up, all summer it would be pretty good. There was talk of new houses going up in the neighborhood. Business might soon be good all year round. It might expand, and Jimmy’s wages would expand, too.
Jimmy came home bubbling over with hopes. They grew and grew as he talked. In time he’d get to know the ropes as well as his boss. In time his boss might even make him a partner. In time he might save enough money to buy his partner out.
It didn’t sound any more fantastic to Betty than it did to him. She believed him because she wanted to believe him. It kept her nest egg safe.
“You can do it,” she said. “You can do it if you try. I’ll help you. No matter how little you make, I’ll save part of it. No matter how much you make, I’ll save most of it.”
He looked at her with admiration. “Where did you learn to be so wise about money?”
“I guess it’s just in me,” she said, with more wisdom than she knew.
The Bird Like No Other
New York Daily News
August 24, 1964
Summary: When vacation time came again, it took all the courage an aging mother had to reopen her cottage. It was the saddest summer of her life. It was also the most fulfilling because of a very gentle fiction she created between herself and a little boy who loved her.
Colby ran through the woods. He ran hard, as if he were putting his house and family behind him forever. The woods were not a dark forest of towering trees. They were just scrub oak and stunted pine with plenty of room for the sun to dapple the road. The road, which was really a footpath worn by time, was so much a part of Colby’s summers that at any point he knew how many trees to count before he reached the one with the hollow that caught the rain and gave the birds a drinking cup.
As the clearing came in sight with its cluster of cottages, Colby began to call Aunt Emily, the stridency in his voice commanding her to shut out the sweeter sounds of summer.
Whatever Aunt Emily was doing, she would stop what she was doing. Wherever she was, she would leave where she was, and start for the porch, so that by the time Colby pounded up the stairs, she would be sitting on her old porch glider, waiting for him to fling himself down beside her, and cool his hot anger in her calm.
A LITTLE GIRL NO SUBSTITUTE
Aunt Emily was a courtesy aunt, a family friend of many years. When Colby’s mother was a little girl, she played with Aunt Emily’s litt
le boy when they came on holiday from their separate cities. Then Aunt Emily lost her little boy in a winter accident on an icy street. When vacation time came again, it took all her courage to reopen her cottage. But she knew she must do it this saddest summer of all if she was ever to learn to live in a world that could not change its tempo to the slow cadence of grief.
(That summer, long ago,) Colby’s mother was seven or so and she made frequent visits with her dolls. She brought the dolls that didn’t cry or didn’t wet because they were always rewarded with a tea party for their good behavior. She eased the summer’s sorrow for Aunt Emily, who felt an obligation to show this trusting child a cheerful face and to take an interest in her eager talk.
All the same though, Aunt Emily felt a bit ungrateful, thinking it a little girl dressing her dolls for a tea party is no substitute for a little boy playing cowboys and Indians at the top of his lungs.
Colby’s family would have agreed with her. His mother adored him because he was her long awaited son, five years younger than the youngest of his three sisters. His father was pleased and proud to have another male aboard.
But Colby couldn’t see where he came first with anybody. As far as he was concerned he was always at the bottom of a heap of scrapping sisters. No matter how good he tried to be, his day most generally depended on how good his sisters decided to be. His rights were never mightier than their wrongs.
Aunt Emily had been Colby’s sounding board ever since the summer he was four. On a day in that summer his mother had postponed a promised boat ride because his sisters had fought with each other all morning over whose turn it was to use the paint box that somebody had given them together. When they began to make each other cry, they were sent upstairs as punishment, and the outing was postponed.
Colby felt he was being punished took, for blows he hadn’t truck and tears he hadn’t caused. He had to tell somebody before he burst. Since he knew the way to Aunt Emily’s, he went to tell her.
She took a look at his clouded-over face, plumped him down on her old porch glider, and then went inside to telephone his mother that Colby wasn’t lost, just decamped. His mother told her what had happened and Aunt Emily listened with uncommitted little clucks. She wasn’t any Solomon to decide if it was more important to punish the bad than to keep a promise to the good.
She could hear him banging back and forth on the glider, waiting in hot impatience to tell his tale of woe. The old glider screeched and groaned at this assault on its unoiled joints.
Standing inside her screen door, wincing in sympathy, Aunt Emily knew that neither she nor any nearby neighbor could take that tortured soul much longer. She tried to think of something to distract Colby’s mind until he calmed down. A Bluejay flew across her line of vision, a familiar bird, familiar to the landscape. But the unexpected sight of him bloomed into an idea.
Shutting the screen door soundlessly, coming toward Colby on whispering feet, she put her finger to her lips and sat down beside him.
IT WAS ROUTINE FOR COLBY TO WAIT
As he stared at her round-eyed, his swinging suspended, she said softly, “Colby, before you came the most beautiful bird I ever saw was sitting on my hydrangeas bush. He almost took my breath. I never saw a bird of so many colors. When you came running, he flew away. but if we don’t talk or make any noise, he may come back.”
After a moment of reflection, Colby’s curiosity to see the bird like no other pulled out the plug in his sea of troubles, and he settled back.
That was the way this very gentle fiction began. When Aunt Emily decided that the beautiful bird was gone for the day, Colby was wearing an agreeable face of a normal color. Taking the initiative, a shameless triumph over a small boy, Aunt Emily plunged into a story before Colby could get his mouth open to begin his own.
For the rest of that summer and in the summers that followed, when Colby came glad or when Colby came over a little boy man, the right to speak first was his automatically. But when Colby came breathing fire, (there was an) uncanny coincidence. The bird like no other had just left the yard.
It was then routine for Colby to seal his lips and settle down to wait.
Now he was eight and on this shady morning when he flung himself up Aunt Emily’s stairs and flung himself down beside her on the poor old glider that responded as expected to a sudden shock, it was plainly a morning to search the sky for the bird like no other.
Before Aunt Emily could comb a fresh story out of her memory, Colby got a speech in ahead of her. He said in an excited whisper, “I see it. I see it. I see the bird you said was so beautiful. I guess he’s every color in the world.”
JUST AN ORDINARY BLUEJAY
Jerking upright in shocked surprise, making the glider wearily protest, Aunt Emily said in a shaken voice, “Where?”
“On the tree over there, see, over there.”
By a composition of golden sunlight and blue sky and green leaves and shimmering summer air, a bird on a swinging bough took on an astonishing beauty.
For a moment Aunt Emily couldn’t believe her eyes. but in another moment her eyes stopped playing tricks. And suddenly she wanted to stop playing tricks too.
“Colby, look again. That’s just a jay. There never was a bird like the one I told you about. I made him up.
As if to give credence to her confession, the bird on the bough released itself from its brief enchantment and flew away in the dress of a Bluejay.
Colby said slowly, “why did you make up a bird to tell me about?”
Aunt Emily started to answer instead, she asked, “Don’t you know why, Colby?”
“I think so,” he said soberly.
“Will you tell me?”
“To make me sit still so I wouldn’t say bad things about my family when I was mad. But you didn’t want to make me sit still like a punishment. so you made me sit still like we were waiting to see something wonderful.”
“I see the wonderful thing I’ve been waiting for. I see a little boy who learned about family loyalty. It’s as beautiful to look at as that bird.”
Colby got up. He scuffed his sneakers. “Well, I guess I’ll go home now. See you, Aunt Emily.
He bound down the stairs and began to run home, running faster and faster. Aunt Emily’s eyes filled with sentimental tears. He was trying to catch up with the kind of man he was going to be. He was rushing toward understanding.
About A Woman Named Nancy
(Fiction)
Vineyard Gazette
Feb.13, 1987
There was a woman named Nancy who lived in a house which was her whole life, or so it was said. It was a fine square house, noble beside the modest houses surrounding it. She kept it immaculate, polished, shining, not a smidgen of dust anywhere. Her lawn and flowerbeds looked as if they had come to life out of a garden catalogue. There was not a weed showing, nor anywhere a tuft of grass that needed cutting, nor a fading bloom spoiling the beauty and symmetry of a flowing bush.
There was no birdbath on the lawn. Unwitting visitors had sometimes mentioned it. And Nancy’s reply was firm. A bird bath would attract birds which would come to drink and linger and leave unpleasant droppings. The birds would attract cats who streak across the lawn and do them mayhem. The cats would leave even more unpleasant droppings, adding the final injury of scuffing up a flow bed to conceal them.
On this island where birds abound, where bird watchers are uncountable, where birdseed is a household staple, she did not know one bird from another.
She had never owned a house until she came across this jewel and found herself able to finance it. Though to some the responsibility of owning a house is a nightmare, an albatross, a burden from dawn to dark, its bills more binding than a marriage contract, its upkeep everlasting, to Nancy a house of her own gave her the feeling of security that a long-gone husband never had.
I knew her, but not with any degree of intimacy. She was a year-round person as was I. That is a bond, and in time of need, we know we are here for each other. H
er neighbors admired her industrious ways. She had a steady job. And for an hour more before she left home, she worked in her yard. When she came home, tire though she must have been, she worked in her yard as long as there was light.
The neighbor women with a baby almost always on the way and their husbands forever trying to stretch there pay to feed another mouth could not afford to have the concern for appearance that motivated her days. but instead of envy they felt secure in her solidity. However their fortunes shifted, hers remained unchanged.
She was a cook by profession and well paid, but she enjoyed most cooking for those who had nothing to give her but their thanks. She had stocked her kitchen with family size pots and pans and she regularly called some other or older child to come and get some dish hot out of her oven there was rarely a day that someone or more than one did not benefit from her bounty.
She had, of course, no time to visit people, and no inclination to waste time with idle callers. She was always doing something and a knock on her door, or a hoot and holler from a car screeching to a halt when she was busy in her yard, interrupted her rigorous schedule that had every moment filled with her job, her house chores and her yard chores from waking time to bedtime.
One day I was driving past, without of course, honking my horn, when Nancy’s door opened and a child, standing respectfully outside her door, held out her hands to receive the sizable dish that Nancy placed in them.
Nancy saw me, we exchanged greetings, and on some impulse she asked me if I would like to take home a piece of apply pie fresh out of her oven. I was pleased to accept. Apple pie is my favorite. She invited me in and we walked back to the immaculate kitchen through the beautifully kept house. On the table was a great oblong pan. I was totally bemused to see an oblong apple pie. I thought there was a standing rule that pies should be round. I took a piece home, ate it with pleasure, and would, in time, have forgotten it. But that day will remain in my mind forever. It was the last day I was to see Nancy whole and strong.
The Last Leaf of Harlem Page 28
