Children Playing Before a Statue of Hercules

by David Sedaris

  But Edith did not want to wash up.

  “As Father used to say, ‘I propose we have a wee nip in honor of the occasion!’ ” Mildred said a bit wildly, her voice rising over the roar of a passing truck on Third Avenue. She thought Edith looked at her in a funny way, so she added, “Not that I’ve become a drinking woman, by any means! I did have one while I was waiting for you in the station, though. Could you tell?”

  “No. You mean you went in a bar by yourself and had a drink?”

  “Why, yes,” Mildred replied, wishing now that she hadn’t mentioned it. “Women often go into bars in New York, you know. It’s not like Cleveland.” Mildred turned a little unsteadily and went into the kitchen. She did want another bit of a drink, just to continue feeling as calm as she did now, for it certainly was helping to calm her. She took a quick nip, then fixed a tray with the bottle and glasses and ice. “Well, down the hatch!” Mildred said as she set the tray down on the coffee table.

  Edith had refused the maroon-covered easy chair Mildred had offered her, and now she sat tensely on the couch and sipped her whiskey as if it were poison. She gazed off now and then at the windows—the curtains, Mildred admitted, were not so clean as Cleveland curtains, but at least she had brushed them down last night—and at the brown bureau that was her least attractive piece of furniture. Why didn’t Edith look over at the kitchen table where everything was lined up as neatly as a color photograph in a magazine?

  “The gladiolas are beautiful, Millie,” Edith said, looking at the gladiolas Mildred had set in a blue vase atop the bureau. “I grow gladiolas in the backyard.”

  Mildred lighted up appreciatively at Edith’s compliment. “How long am I to have the pleasure of your company, sister?”

  “Oh, just till—” Edith broke off and looked at the windows with an expression of annoyance.

  A truck or perhaps a cement mixer was rattling and clanking up the avenue. Suddenly Mildred, whose ears had adjusted long ago to the street noises, realized how it must sound to Edith, and writhed with shame. She had quite forgotten the worst feature of her apartment—the noise. The garbage trucks that started grinding around three A.M. were going to be worse.

  “It’s a nuisance,” Mildred said carelessly, “but one gets used to it. What with the housing—” Something else was passing, backfiring like pistol shots, and Mildred realized she couldn’t hear her own voice. She waited, then resumed. “What with the housing being—”

  But Edith silenced her with a hopeless shake of her head.

  A war of horns was going on now, probably a little traffic jam at the corner. That was the way it went, Mildred tried to convey to Edith with a smile and a shrug, all at once or nothing at all. For a few moments their ears, even Mildred’s ears, were filled with the cacophony of car horns, of snarling human voices.

  “Really, Millie, I don’t see how you stand this noise day after day,” Edith said.

  Mildred shrugged involuntarily, started to say something, and said nothing after all. She felt inexplicably foolish all at once.

  “What were you going to say before?” Edith prompted.

  “Oh. Well, what with the housing being what it is today, New Yorkers can’t be too picky where they live. I have my budget, and I didn’t have any choice but this place and something on Tenth Avenue when I wanted to move from the Bronx. Took me three months to find this.” She said it with a little pride that was instantly quelled by her sister’s troubled regard of the windows. Well, there weren’t any trucks passing now, Mildred thought a bit resentfully, and the traffic jam had evidently cleared up. What was she looking at? Self-consciously, Mildred got up and lowered the window, though she knew it would not help much to lessen the noise. She looked at her geranium. The geranium was nothing but a crooked dry stalk in its pot now, at the extreme left of the windowsill where the sun lingered longest. It must have been three weeks since she’d watered it, and now she felt overcome with remorse. Why was she always rushing so, she forgot all about doing the nice things, all the little things that gave her real pleasure? A wave of self-pity brought tears to her eyes. A lot her sister knew about all she had to contend with, the million and one things she had to think of all by herself, not only at home but at the office, too. You could tell just by looking at Edith she never had to worry or rush about anything, even to take a hard-boiled egg off the stove.

  With a smile, Mildred turned to Edith, and under cover of a “Hungry yet?” ducked into the kitchen to see about the hard-boiled eggs. She balanced the three hot eggs on top of the block of ice in the icebox, so they would cool as fast as possible.

  “Remember the time we took the raw eggs by mistake on the picnic, Edie?” Mildred said, laughing as she came back into the living room. It was an old family joke, and one or the other of them mentioned it almost every time they cooked hard-boiled eggs.

  “Will I ever forget!” Edith shrieked, bringing her hands down gently on her knees. “I still say Billy Reed switched them on us. He’s the same rascal today he always was.”

  “Those were happy old days, weren’t they?” Mildred said vaguely, wondering if she shouldn’t perhaps cook the eggs even longer. She made a start for the kitchen and changed her mind.

  “Millie, do you think it’s really worth it to live in New York?” Edith asked suddenly.

  “Worth it? How do you mean worth it?—I suppose I earn fairly good money.” She didn’t mean to sound superior to her sister, but she was proud of her independence. “I’m able to save a little, too.”

  “I mean, it’s such a hard life you lead and all, being away from the family. New York’s so unfriendly, and no trees to look at or anything. I think you’re more nervous than you were two years ago.”

  Mildred stared at her. Maybe New York had made her more nervous, quicker about things. But wasn’t she as happy and healthy as Edith? “They’re starting trees right here on Third Avenue. They’re pretty small yet, but tomorrow you can see them.—I don’t think it’s such an unfriendly town,” she went on defensively. “Why, just this afternoon, I heard the delicatessen man talking with a woman about—And even the plumber—” She broke off, knowing she wouldn’t be able to express what she meant.

  “Well, I don’t know,” Edith said, twiddling her hands limply in her lap. “My last trip here, I asked a policeman where the Radio City Music Hall was, and you’d have thought I was asking him to map me a way to the North Pole or something, he seemed so put out about it. Nobody’s got time for anybody else—have they?” Her voice trailed off, and she looked at Mildred for an answer.

  Mildred moistened her lips. Something in her struggled slowly and painfully to the surface. “I—I’ve always found our policemen very courteous. Maybe yours was a traffic officer or something. They’re pretty busy, of course. But New York policemen are famous for their courtesy, especially to out-of-towners. Why, they even call them New York’s Finest!” A tingle of civic pride swept over her. She remembered the morning she had stood in the rain at Forty-second Street and Fifth Avenue and watched the companies of policemen—New York’s Finest—march down the avenue. And the mounted policemen! How handsome they had looked, row upon row with their horses’ hoofs clattering! She had stood there not caring that she was all by herself then, or that the rain was soaking her, she felt so proud of her big city. A man with a little boy perched on his shoulder had turned around in the crowd and smiled at her, she remembered. “New York’s very friendly,” Mildred protested earnestly.

  “Well, maybe, but that’s not the way it seems to me.” Edith slipped off a shoe and rubbed her instep against the heel of her other foot. “And sister,” she continued in a more subdued tone, “I hope you’re not indulging more than you should.”

  Mildred’s eyes grew wide. “Do you mean drinking? Goodness, no! Why, at least I don’t think so. I just took these in your honor, Edie. Gracious, you don’t think I do this every night, do you?”

  “Oh, I didn’t mean I thought that!” Edith said, forcing a smile.

&nbs
p; Mildred chewed her underlip and wondered whether she should think of some other excuse for herself, or let the matter drop.

  “You know, Millie, I’d meant to speak to you about maybe coming back to Cleveland to live. Everybody’s talking about the interesting new jobs opening up there, and you’re not—well, so deep-fixed in this job that you couldn’t leave, are you?”

  “Of course, I could leave if I wanted to. But Mr. Sweeney depends a great deal on me. At least he says he does.” She swallowed, and tried to collect all that clamored inside her for utterance. “It’s not a very big job, I suppose, but it’s a good one. And we’ve all been working together for seven years, you know,” she asserted, but she knew this by itself couldn’t express to Edith how the four of them—she had written Edith many a time about Louise who handled the books and the files, and Carl their salesman, and Mr. Sweeney, of course—were much more of a family than many families were. “Oh, New York’s my home now, Edie.”

  “You’ve always got a home with us, Millie.”

  Mildred was about to say that was very sweet of her, but a truck’s brakes were mounting to a piercing crescendo outside. She dropped her eyes from Edith’s disappointed face.

  “I’ve got some things I ought to put on hangers overnight,” Edith said finally. “And do you mind if I wash my white gloves? They’ll just about dry by morning. I’ll have to leave early.”

  “What time?” Mildred asked, in order to be cooperative, but, aware that her worried expression might make her seem eager for Edith’s departure, she smiled, which was almost worse.

  “The train’s at eight-forty-eight,” Edith replied, going to her suitcase.

  “That’s too bad. I’m sorry you’re not staying longer, Edith.” She really did feel sorry. They’d hardly have time to talk at all. And Edith probably wouldn’t notice half the things she had done around the house, the neat closets, the half of the top drawer she had cleared for her in the bureau, the container of soft drinks Edith liked that she had thought of the first thing last evening.

  Mildred wiped the back of her hand across her eyes, and went into the kitchen. She got the stew pan of boiled potatoes from the icebox and dumped them into the salad bowl. She separated the celery under running water, bunched it, and sliced it onto the potatoes. The old habit of rushing, of saving split seconds, caught her up in its machinery as if she no longer possessed a volition of her own, and she surrendered to it with a kind of tortured enjoyment. She hardly breathed except to gasp at intervals, and she moved faster and faster. The jar of olives flew into the bowl at one burst, followed by a shower of onion chips and a cloud of paprika that made her cough. Finally, she seized knife and fork and began to slice everything in the bowl every which way. Her muscles grew so taut, it hurt her even to move to the icebox to get the eggs. The eggs had descended three inches or more into the ice, and she could not extract them with her longest fingers. She peered at their murkily enlarged forms through the ice cake, then burst out laughing.

  “Edie!” she cried. “Edie, come here and look!”

  But her only reply was the flushing of the toilet. Mildred bent over in silent, paroxysmic hilarity. If her sister only knew about the toilet! The toothbrush the plumber had dragged out that hadn’t even looked like a toothbrush!

  Mildred straightened and grimly wrestled the ice cake from the box. She shook the eggs into the sink, holding the ice with hands and forearms. The eggs had bright, gooey orange centers, but they were fairly cold. She hacked them into the salad, listening the while for Edith’s coming out of the bathroom. She was racing to have the supper ready when Edith came out, but what did it matter really whether she was ready or not? Why was she in such a hurry? She giggled at herself, then, with her mouth still smiling, set her teeth and stirred the dressing so fast it rose high up the sides of the mixing bowl.

  “Can I help you, Millie?”

  “Not a thing to do, thank you, Edie.” Mildred dragged the coleslaw out of the icebox so hastily, she dropped it facedown on the floor, but Edith had just turned away and didn’t see.

  Within moments, she was ready, the table laid, the coffee perking, the pumpernickel bread—but there wasn’t any butter. She’d forgotten butter for herself yesterday, and forgotten it again today.

  “There isn’t any butter,” Mildred said in an agony of apology. Edith took her place at the table. She thought of running down for some, but felt it would be rude to make Edith wait. “It’s the same old-fashioned potato salad Mama used to make at home, though.”

  “It looks delicious. Don’t you ever have hot meals here at home?”

  “Why, most of the time. I try to eat a very balanced diet.” She knew what her sister was thinking now, that she lived off delicatessen sandwiches, probably. She passed Edith the coleslaw. “Here’s something very healthful, if you like.” Her throat closed up. She felt ready to cry again. “I’m sorry, Edie. I suppose you’d have preferred a hot meal.”

  “No, this tastes very nice. Now, don’t you worry,” Edith said, poking at the potato salad.

  At the end of the supper, Mildred realized she had not put out the dill pickles. Or the rollmops.

  “Would you like to step out tonight? Take a look at the big city?” Mildred came in from the kitchen, where she had just finished cleaning up.

  Edith was lying on the couch. “Well, maybe. I don’t think I can nap after all, with all the traffic going. I suppose it lets up at night, though.”

  “There’s a nice movie a few blocks uptown within walking distance,” Mildred said, feeling a sink of defeat. How would she ever break it to Edith that there was some kind of noise on Third Avenue all night long?

  They went to a shabby little movie house on Thirty-fourth Street whose gay lights Edith had seen and fixed upon.

  “Is this your neighborhood theater?” Edith asked.

  “Oh, no. There’s any number of better theaters around,” Mildred answered rather shortly. Edith had chosen the place. She almost wished Edith had wanted to go up to Broadway. She’d have spent more money, but at least the theater would have been nicer, and Edith couldn’t have complained. Mildred was so tired, she dozed during some of the picture.

  That night, Mildred was aware that Edith got out of bed several times, to get glasses of water or to stand by the window. Mildred suggested that Edith get some cotton from the medicine cabinet to put in her ears. But Mildred slept so hard herself, even on the too-short sofa, most of her impressions might have come from a great distance.

  “Are they mixing cement at this hour?” Edith asked.

  “No, that’s our garbage disposal, I’m afraid,” Mildred said with an automatic little smile, though it was too dark for Edith to see her. She had dreaded this: the clatter of ash cans, the uninterrupted moaning of machinery chewing up cans, bottles, cartons, and anything else that was dumped into the truck’s open rear. Mildred bared her set teeth and tried to estimate just how awful it sounded to her sister: the clank of bottles now, the metallic bump of an emptied ash can carelessly dropped on the sidewalk, and under it all the relentless rrrr-rrrr-rrr-rrr. Quite bad, she decided, and quite ugly, if one wasn’t used to it. “They have their job to do,” Mildred added. “I don’t know what a big city like this would do without them.”

  “Um-m. Looks to me like they could do it in the daytime when nobody’s trying to sleep,” said Edith.

  “What?”

  Edith repeated it more loudly. “I don’t see how you stand it, even with the cotton in your ears.”

  “I don’t use cotton anymore,” Mildred murmured.

  Mildred did not feel too wide awake the next morning, and Edith said she hadn’t slept all night and was dead tired, so neither said very much. At the core of Mildred’s silence was both her ignominy at having failed as a hostess and a desire not to waste a second, for despite having gotten up early, they were a bit pressed to get off when they should. At eight o’clock sharp, the pneumatic drill burst out like a fanfare of machine guns: a big apartment house was goi
ng up directly across the street. Edith just glanced at Mildred and shook her head, but around 8:15, there was an explosion across the street that made Edith jump and drop something she had in her hands.

  Mildred smiled. “They have to blast some. New York has rock foundations, you know. You’d be surprised how fast they build things, though.”

  Edith’s suitcase was not closed for the last time until 8:27, and they arrived at the station with no time to spare.

  “I hope you can manage a longer visit on your return trip, Edith,” Mildred said.

  “Well, Arthur did say something about going back to Cleveland with me for a while, but we’ll let you know. I can’t thank you enough for the lovely time, Millie.”

  A pressed hand, a brushed cheek, and that was all. Mildred watched the train doors close down the platform, but she had no time to watch the train pull out. What time was it? Eight forty-nine on the dot, her wristwatch said. If she hurried, she might be at the office by nine as usual. Of course, Mr. Sweeney wouldn’t mind her being late on such a special morning, but for that very reason, she thought it would be nice to be prompt.

  She darted to the corner of Seventh Avenue and Thirty-fourth Street and caught the crosstown bus. She could catch the Third Avenue bus uptown and be at the office on Second Avenue in no time. At the Third Avenue bus stop, an anxious frown came on her face as she estimated the speed and distance of an oncoming truck, then ran. She mustn’t forget to buy stockings today during her lunch hour, she thought. And tonight, she ought to drop a note to Edith in Ithaca, telling her how she had enjoyed her stay, and inviting her again when she could make it. And a note to Arthur, of course, about the new baby. Maybe Edith and Arthur both could stay with her awhile, if they went back to Cleveland together. She’d be able to make them comfortable somehow.