Testing the Current

by William McPherson

  “It must have been a great relief, Jamie, to find him in the coffin,” Tommy’s Aunt Martha said. She called his father “Jamie.” His grandmother had called him James, as did his Canadian cousins. Everyone else called him Mac.

  Of course, Mrs. Barger was strange; everyone agreed on that. She was very High Church, and was constantly threatening to go to Rome but so far she hadn’t. The Bargers owned the Barger Block and several other buildings on the main street of Grande Rivière, with shops on the ground floor and doctors’ offices and apartments on the floors above. Mrs. Barger sometimes scrubbed the steps herself. She said it was penance but Tommy’s father said she was just tight. Tommy had seen her himself with her scrub brush and pail in front of her buildings. Everyone in town had seen her; she was easy to spot. She wore nothing but red, ever: shoes, hat, gloves, handbag, coat, dress. When she scrubbed the steps of her buildings she wore red pants that a seamstress had made for her. Only her fingernails were plain. Mr. Barger refused to let her paint them, or to have her hair bobbed. Those two things she could not do. The day after Mr. Barger died, she covered herself in black from head to foot and went to the beauty parlor to have her hair cut and her nails polished a brilliant scarlet. Tommy’s father said that at Mr. Barger’s funeral her fingernails lit up the whole church. They were brighter than the stained-glass windows. Mrs. Barger also had a glass eye. Tommy was grateful that she wasn’t there for Thanksgiving. Shortly after Mr. Barger died so she was still wearing black except for her nails, she had come to dinner. It was just Mrs. Barger and his parents, and Tommy had sat at the table with them. She talked a lot about Fred and how he had suffered.

  “Just look at this, Mac,” she said, reaching into her purse, pulling out an envelope of photographs and waving one in front of his father, who was putting crackers in his soup, one of his habits that his mother didn’t like. “Here he is in the hospital, only three days before he died.” She began to weep. Tommy’s father looked aghast. His mother called for Rose to clear the soup. Nobody had even finished. “I took the pictures myself. I’m sorry that some of them are a little out of focus.” His mother helped Rose pick up the soup plates, and they returned with the meat and potatoes and the limp carrots. Tommy leaned over to see the pictures that Mrs. Barger was stacking up beside his father’s plate. His mother began talking about an article in the evening paper. His father carved the roast. He didn’t say a word. “And here he is the day he died. And I took this one right after he died, minutes after his last breath.” Tommy thought Mr. Barger looked as if he were snoring. His mouth was open. Mrs. Barger continued weeping and piling up the photographs next to his father. “May the souls of the faithful departed rest in peace, amen,” she said, raising her eyes to heaven and crossing herself twice, before and after. Tommy’s father served the plates, asking Mrs. Barger in a tight voice if she cared for gravy on both the meat and the potatoes. “Yes, both, please,” she replied, “I’m starving. And here he is at the house, in his lovely casket. It was Mr. Hall’s best.” Mr. Hall was the Protestants’ undertaker. “I got a picture from every angle,” she said, displaying a series like a hand of cards. “I don’t think he ever looked better.”

  Mr. Barger might never have looked better, but his father certainly had. He was white, and his lips were very tight. Tommy’s mother continued talking about the article in the paper, but nobody picked up on the subject. Mrs. Barger cut her meat and began to eat, chewing and dabbing at her eyes with her napkin. Tommy couldn’t believe what happened next. Mrs. Barger reached up to her eye—her right eye, the one next to Tommy—grappled with it, and removed it. “It hurts,” she said, setting it on the table right next to Tommy so that the unblinking, disembodied eye as big as an egg, bigger than any eye he could have imagined, stared at him while he tried to focus on his carrots.

  Tommy’s father excused him from the table without his even asking. He was very nice about it. His father looked as if he’d like to leave too, but he was always polite to guests and couldn’t. They were having canned raspberries and cookies for dessert, but Tommy didn’t come back for it. Mrs. Barger didn’t come back for dinner again, either.

  Without its leaves the big mahogany table in the dining room was round and easily sat six, but when all its leaves were in place there was room for sixteen. The day before Thanksgiving, Tommy’s mother and Rose and Tommy’s two aunts had set up the big table and also a smaller round table for the children—Tommy’s three cousins and Amy Steer, who would be there for dinner with Mrs. Steer; Mr. Steer was still at hunting camp with Vint—and for Tommy’s brother John and Emily Sedgwick because they’d like to be together and Emily was thought to be good with children. That night Tommy’s parents had taken both his aunts and uncles to dinner at the country club while Tommy and his cousins ate in the room off the kitchen, which was sometimes the maid’s room—there was a cot in it—and sometimes the breakfast room because it had a big square table and chairs, but most often it was just the den because that was where the Ping-Pong table was set up. It was also the room in which his grandmother had strained the currants through the empty sugar sacks for the red currant jelly she loved. Tommy’s grandmother had died early in November so she didn’t make the stuffing she always made the day before Thanksgiving, nor would she be making the currant biscuits for Christmas breakfast. It was a custom Tommy would miss. He missed seeing his grandmother in the kitchen with the brown glazed bowl by her side, humming as she pulled apart the bread for the stuffing, tearing it into tiny pieces. Just as he could recall at will his grandmother’s voice and her warm, powdery smell that still lingered in her bedroom, so he could remember the pungent smell of her stuffing, and though the china and the silver and the fluted goblets with the green stems were the same, the stuffing was not. Even Tommy’s mother agreed, and she had made it.

  Tommy’s cousins were his Aunt Martha’s children. Neither his Aunt Clara and Uncle Andrew, nor his Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Roger had any, although his mother said they wanted them, of course. Everybody wanted children. Tommy had heard his Aunt Elizabeth say that she was too small to bear them, which Tommy found odd, though she was scarcely larger than a child and not so tall as his cousin Charlotte, who was just twelve. Charlotte and Julia were two years apart, but Steve was nearly a year younger than Tommy. They were from Minneapolis, and they had a lot of fun together and with their parents. They seemed a happy family. Charlotte was his favorite. Julia was funny, but she wasn’t as nice as Charlotte. Charlotte was very beautiful. People said she looked like Tommy’s grandmother, a resemblance Tommy tried but failed to see. Charlotte was tall. She had long dark hair and deep brown eyes with thick lashes—the MacAllister eyes, people said, though Tommy remembered his grandmother’s eyes as being watery and pale. Charlotte’s were more like his father’s but warmer, and Tommy himself was said to have his father’s eyes. “Look at those lashes, Emma,” his grandmother said once. “He’ll be a killer when he grows up.” Tommy examined his eyes in his grandmother’s mirror but he didn’t see anything special about them; they weren’t like Charlotte’s. His voice wasn’t, either. Charlotte’s was soft and low.

  Tommy liked all three of his cousins, even though they seemed very different from him. Their presence allowed him to be his own age. It was fun to be his own age, to toss rolls across the table and to punch, to throw salt and to make faces over the vegetables and to make fun of the grown-ups, instead of being the polite little boy who Mrs. Appleton said one day at the country club, after she had dropped all her quarters in the slot machine, would never have dirty ears like her grandson. “You’d never have dirty ears, would you Tommy?” she asked. Mrs. Appleton said her grandson was a real boy; she spoke to Tommy as if he were an imitation, like the imitation vanilla that wasn’t as good as the real thing, though it looked the same. Mrs. Appleton liked her grandson but Tommy didn’t think she liked him. But that was all right; Tommy didn’t like her either. Still, he could feel his ears burn when she said that, and he was forced to say that yes, he did too hav
e dirty ears sometimes, just like any other boy. Of course his mother wouldn’t take him to the country club with dirty ears, and he didn’t have any choice about being polite. Tommy hated it when his mother washed his face, neck, and ears. She was especially rough on the ears, and she would never let him do it himself. The only reason she let him brush his own teeth was that one day he had simply clamped his mouth shut and she couldn’t get the toothbrush into it.

  Often Tommy ate alone, at his own small table in the corner of the dining room near the kitchen door. Tommy’s father didn’t come home for dinner until later, and, if his father and mother weren’t going out, they would eat together then, but that was usually too late for Tommy. He liked his little table, though, with the chairs that fit him but were too small for his mother. So was the table; she had to sit sideways at it. And, because Tommy hated to be the only one eating, his mother would have a bite or two with him—Tommy insisted on it—but mostly she just pretended, moving her knife and fork around a little and drinking her coffee while she kept an eye on him to see that he ate his whole dinner. Sometimes, if his mother was busy or out, Rose would eat with him, and then they would sit at the big table in the room off the kitchen. Rose would never have fit at Tommy’s table. Rose didn’t pretend to eat, either. Rose ate; she ate a lot, and she wasn’t too fussy if Tommy didn’t finish his plate. She’d give him dessert anyway. Sometimes his mother would make them Indian pudding, which Tommy thought was funny in an embarrassing sort of way—eating Indian pudding with an Indian. Tommy asked Rose if the Indians ate a lot of Indian pudding, but Rose said no. “The only place I’ve ever had it is at your house,” she said, picking up the cream pitcher and pouring a big dollop of the thick cream over it. And then she laughed. “It’s good, though,” she said. “Those Indians must have been good cooks.” She laughed again, and Tommy wondered if Rose thought the whole idea of eating Indian pudding here, with him, was a little strange, too, but he didn’t ask her. He just watched while she took another serving. He hoped she would talk about the Indians, now that they were on the subject, but all she said was “I still like ice cream better.” Rose really did like dessert. She also liked mashed potatoes and corn, but not most other vegetables. She and Tommy agreed on that. Tommy’s mother told Mrs. Sedgwick that Rose didn’t eat to live; she lived to eat. Mrs. Sedgwick said, “I always thought she lived to drink.”

  Tommy liked having dinner with his cousins, without his mother there to mind his manners. That night Steve made rude belching noises and Charlotte told him he was behaving like a pig, and everyone laughed and shouted at once. They passed around one of his father’s cigarettes. He smoked Lucky Strikes; Emily Sedgwick smoked Chesterfields. The cigarette made Tommy cough, but Charlotte smoked it as if she’d been smoking all her life. Afterwards they played tag in the long upstairs hall, running in and out of the bedrooms, hiding in closets and under beds, behind chests and chairs, in the back stairway that was always cold in winter. They made a tremendous racket until Rose told them that their parents would be home any minute and they had to go to bed or everyone, including Rose, would be in trouble. So they got into their pajamas and Charlotte told them a ghost story. She made her voice sound very spooky, and they all curled up together to hear about the man with the golden arm.

  Steve slept in Tommy’s room on the rollaway cot. It was strange having another person sleeping in his room. Steve slept with his mouth open, like a baby, and Tommy lay awake listening to his breathing. The only time Tommy had ever shared his room was in the summer, on the Island, when Michael Aldrich would sometimes spend the night with him. Sometimes, on the Island, he stayed at Michael’s, too. On the Island they had to share the bed. The Aldriches came to Grande Rivière only for the summer; the rest of the time they lived in foreign countries. Mrs. Aldrich and Michael and some of their older children—there were five of them all together, but Michael was a lot younger than the rest—usually came for the whole summer, but Mr. Aldrich couldn’t spare more than a month. He had to stay abroad and work. Tommy was never allowed to spend the night at Jimmy Randolph’s, though Jimmy had invited him and Tommy always wanted to. Tommy’s mother said he had his own bed to sleep in, and that was where he belonged. Now the house was so full that David and John had to share John’s room so that Charlotte and Julie could have David’s. Tommy’s Aunt Martha and Uncle Charles slept in his grandmother’s room, which his mother now called the big guest room, and his Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Roger slept in the little guest room. There were six bedrooms in Tommy’s house, and they were all filled. It gave Tommy a good feeling to have so much life in his house this Thanksgiving holiday.

  Eighteen grown-ups and five children sat down for dinner on Thanksgiving Day: Tommy’s two aunts and uncles, the two Canadian cousins, his brothers and Nick Farnsworth, Emily Sedgwick and her parents and Mrs. Sedgwick’s mother, the Hutchins and Mrs. Steer and Amy. Cousin Gertrude shouted—she always shouted, because she thought no one else could hear, either—“A very festive occasion for a household in mourning,” but everyone went right on talking. Nobody paid any attention. Tommy’s Aunt Martha had really come to pick out what she wanted of his grandmother’s furniture. A lot of the furniture in Tommy’s house had belonged to his grandmother. His mother thought it was old-fashioned, like mourning, and if Martha didn’t take some of it, she wasn’t going to keep it all. She would get rid of what she didn’t want—she didn’t know how; give it to Archie, maybe—before their silver wedding anniversary next August. They were planning a big party then, she told Martha, and she wanted the house to have a fresh look. She wanted it to be hers. “The only things I want—and I don’t really want them myself, Mac does—are your grandfather’s desk and chair in the hall—or were they your great-grandfather’s?” Tommy’s mother said. “And I’d like the china that matches the lamp in Grandmother’s bedroom, if that’s all right with you. I’ve been using it for years, and there’s another set that’s just as good.” Tommy’s father and his Aunt Martha and their brother Archie had grown up in the house, and his grandmother had lived there for many years, almost since the house was built, until Tommy’s father bought it from her, she took a smaller apartment downtown, and Tommy’s family moved in. Tommy didn’t remember that; it had happened when he was a tiny baby. He did remember when his grandmother came back, though, for a visit that gradually extended until finally she moved her bedroom furniture into the big guest room and her ivory and tortoise boxes and her lamp and the china that she knew Tommy’s mother liked, and she just stayed. “We’re going to redecorate in the spring,” his mother said.

  “Oh, Emma,” Aunt Elizabeth interjected. “You always want to throw everything out.” To Mrs. Steer, she said with a kind of helpless laugh, “Isn’t she the limit? Martha, I’ll take what you don’t want.”

  “What would you do with it, Elizabeth?” Tommy’s mother asked. “You’ve got lots of furniture. Better to be rid of it.”

  “Oh, I’d like to have something from the family,” Elizabeth replied, “even if it’s Mac’s family. You have that stiff old sofa of Mother’s, and most of what’s left of the china. Poor Auntie Doc,” she said to Martha, “she had most of the Hopkins family furniture—they had beautiful furniture; some of it came by wagon from New England—and the family silver, too. She sold it all off, piece by piece, before she died. For a pittance, I’m sure. None of us knew she was doing it. She was too proud to admit she needed money. Pride! Those people knew about pride! Oh, how can you get rid of all this, Emma? It’s family!”

  “Perhaps that’s why,” said Mrs. Steer.

  “Now it’s time for the hymns,” said Tommy’s mother, walking toward the piano. “Does anyone’s drink need freshening?” Singing the hymns was a Thanksgiving tradition in Tommy’s house, and it was one that his mother liked to observe, although she said one day to Tommy that the hymns were just a habit, which made their custom seem like biting your nails, which Tommy sometimes did, or sucking your thumb, which he could not remember doing. He had been broken
of that habit years ago. His mother had already told Tommy that she was not making currant biscuits for Christmas breakfast. “That was Grandmother’s custom, not mine,” she said, “and besides, I don’t have the right touch with biscuits.”

  To Tommy it wasn’t the taste or the texture that mattered; he liked the custom, and he liked to think that even though his grandmother was dead, something of her presence lived on, if it were only biscuits rising in the oven. He liked the custom the thornapples had of turning green early in the spring, of the Indians’ appearing at the door in early May with bunches of trailing arbutus they had gathered from the matted leaves and melting snow of the woods. The thick, heavy fragrance rolled forth in waves of sweetness from their delicate pale flowers, rising to fill whatever room they were placed in. Tommy liked it when his mother made popcorn for him on Sunday evening and served it in a bowl of milk. They would eat it together, as if it were cereal. Her own mother used to do the same thing when his mother was a child, popping the corn on a wood range like the one Tommy’s family had at the cottage. In the fall, when they sometimes spent a weekend on the Island, Tommy’s mother would make their breakfast porridge before she went to bed, leaving it to stay warm on the big iron range where the coals glowed all night, just as her mother had done. Tommy’s father put butter and brown sugar on his porridge—he always called it porridge, too; never oatmeal—though his mother said the butter wasn’t necessary with the cream so rich it was almost the color of butter. Tommy liked the custom of packing for the Island in the summer, and of draping the furniture with sheets so that the house looked as if it were inhabited by strangely shaped ghosts. At Easter he liked bringing out the china egg that was borne by the hands and feet of a laughing baby on its back, the egg hatching a tiny yellow chick that had once been fluffy but had lost a lot of its down over the years. The china egg had belonged to somebody, too, maybe his grandmother. Tommy liked laying flowers on the graves of people he had never known or scarcely heard of but whose blood he shared, whose history, known to him or not, was part of his history: people who had died years ago of pneumonia, like his father’s baby brother, or of tuberculosis like his Uncle Jonathan, who was not buried there but out West where he’d died long before Tommy was born. There were a lot of young people in the cemetery, many of them younger even than Tommy, and their gravestones were old and worn. Next Decoration Day, he realized, they would be taking flowers to his grandmother’s grave, and he wondered if she would know it from her still, dark place in the earth. Going to the cemetery on Decoration Day was a custom his father liked to observe, and sometimes Tommy and his father and brothers would go there without his mother, who was never much for going to the cemetery. One reason Tommy liked being with the Steers was that they had so many customs they revered: the Christmas cookies, the candles on the tree, the fruitcakes. Tommy liked the idea of fruitcake as much as he liked the rich dark cake itself. Oh, he loved Mrs. Steer. She loved customs as much as he did. “When you’ve seen the terror of anarchy,” she once said to Tommy as she was baking Christmas cookies, “you learn to appreciate the comforts of form.”